NESquest #21 - Donkey Kong Jr.

(Donkey Kong Jr, June 1986, Nintendo)

As wise blacksmith once stated, "strike while the iron is hot" and Nintendo had no problem jumping head-first into the sequel of the seminal 1981 classic Donkey Kong with a sequel starring the original mascot's son. Was it the Empire Strikes Back of sequels or the Highlander II? Continuing with the gorilla love, let's look at Donkey Kong Jr.

Seriously, DK was everywhere after 1981. Is it just me or does this look like a bowl of Cheetos? Also, should I be worried that Mario's own Mjolnir hammer can't even dent that shit?

Circa 1982, looking to capitalize on the success of the previous year's game-changer, Shigeru Miyamoto wasted zero time in working on the sequel. One of the first ideas that came to mind were to flip the perceived "good and bad" principles around, marking the only time in history that Mario was portrayed as an antagonist. Interviews since have shown that Miyamoto was visualizing the sequel the very second the original had launched and became apprehensive about fans viewing Donkey Kong as a mindless vicious creature. For the next project, he wanted to tell the new chapter from Kong's side of the story by using a newly created son as the hero due to Poppa's sprites being far too large for the desired type of game. The unbelievable popularity of the landmark first title also gave Nintendo the confidence to let the mad professor work without Gunpei Yokoi on his new vision and the results were equally as spectacular. More sprites, more animations, more enemies, and more of pretty much everything else introduced the year prior made Donkey Kong Jr just as popular, financially and critically as his old man.

As easily identifiable a stage as any in gaming history.

Everything Donkey Kong did, Junior does better. Another Famicom launch title, the port over to the NES is damned near perfect, only missing the opening and between stage cutscenes. Again, you are given only a jump button but this time the items around you can be used as weapons instead of points, making for intresting new strategies. Two levels of difficulty are selectable but no worries because this one is nowhere near as hard as DK. All four levels from the cabinet version are not only present and accounted for, but translated wonderfully. This is precisely what a port is supposed to accomplish. While playing, I truly felt like I was playing this at the arcades all over again. The story is simple as Mario wants revenge for the traumatizing of his nookie and captures his former pet, locking him in a cage to prevent another incident. His son, a smaller version sporting a wifebeater wth a J on the front, does what any good offspring should do and launches a rescue mission. The first level has Junior traversing vines while Mario sends Snapjaws, a mobile self-aware bear trap, to end your attempt at rescuing Poppa. To truly get the feel of the arcade, play Game B and marvel at the amount of shit Mario sets loose on you. Controller launching hard? Hell yeah, but unlike parts of Donkey Kong, somewhat beatable with a sense of accomplishment upon doing so. Speaking of, level two is almost a call-back to the first game with a strangely timed jump onto a moving platform that must be performed before the meat of the stage truly takes place. Once across the tricky leap, flying gencodial birds named Nitpickers fly across the screen using their offspring as weapons at an astonishing rate. One can only assume the poor creatures have genitals the size of their heads to constantly be able to shoot out eggs. The next level is just awesome as Junior must reach the top of a what can only be described as electrified conveyor belts dodging sentient sparks that Mario unleashes. Of the early NES titles, the music offered in this section stands above most, as it's almost dubstep without being dubstep. Skrillex is the bane of musical existence but if he ever tried his hand at bittunes, I'd probably convert. The final stage is where the keys to unlock the cage holding Kong are moved upwards by a climbing push with Nitpickers once again trying to avoid the responsibility of extra mouths to feed with their incessant egg dropping. It is a nice sense of balance with the last stage easily being the hardest because not only are the Nitpickers up your ass, but the Snapjaws return to make life fairly difficult. Even death has its own strange reward because DKJ's demise is one of the most memorable in gaming history with his crazed looking eyes still cracking me up 30 years later. 

One may safely assume DK mated with a living, breathing steroid needle for his offspring to be so damned strong. Miyamoto was strange enough that the fact of that scenario not being totally out of the question is insane in and of itself.

THE FINAL VERDICT
9/10 Donkey Kong Junior is far and away a better NES port than the original. The graphics are gorgeous along with being well conceived and ahead of their time enough to hang with games developed a few years later. My honest opinion is that this title could have come out in 1985 and easily withstood much of the competitition it would've had to contend with. This version was beyond faithful and begs the question that if this was also one of the three Famicom launch titles, why was so much cut from Donkey Kong but just about everything present here? Of course, this more than made up for the fucking math game.

"So one night, while sharing a bed with Funky and Lanky, I had a dream that I was climbing vines..."

While DKJ himself wasn't heard from again until the first Mario Kart, his presence is felt to this day as other  than an errant statement by a former Rare employee and a fucked up line in Donkey Kong 64, all signs point to the Donkey Kong of the Donkey Kong Country franchise being Junior's son. Cranky (O.G.Kong) refers to the new DK as his grandson on more than one occasion thereby making his official name Donkey Kong III. Neat-o how the bloodline continued over the years no?

Anyone who ate a bowl recalls one of the best cereals ever released. I tried them both but can barely even remember what I had for breakfast so those memories are long gone I'm afraid. Those bananas sure do make me crave a bag of Runts though.

NESquest #20 - Donkey Kong

(Donkey Kong, June 1986, Nintendo)

Without our next entry in the quest, there wouldn't be the Nintendo we all love and worship today. Their ventures leading up to this ground-breaking title were met with mediocre success at best. This is the one that blew the doors wide open to The Big N becoming a household name. Grab a mug o' your finest joe and kick your feet up ladies and germs. I only have two words for you. Donkey Kong.

This poor thing had no idea it was destined for one mother of an identity crisis...

Gather around the bard's hapsicord kiddies, it is without a doubt history time if there ever deserved one. In 1980, after noticing that American arcade sales were starting to explode, Nintendo decided to ship overseas one of their first games, Radar Scope. It wasn't a horrible game by any stretch, as it played like Space Invaders had a baby with Galaxian. Arcade vendors also felt it was too similar to titles already owned and Radar Scope  flopped. Desperate not to lose their collective asses, then President of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, approached an amibitious young employee named Shigeru Miyamoto about the possibility of creating a new style of game the public might want. To insure everything ran smoothly, one of this blog's heroes, Gunpei Yokoi, was given the task of overseeing whatever new product Miyamoto decided to begin. 

It may shock the everlovin' hell out of you how close we came to this...

Nintendo was actively pursuing the Popeye license (who Miyamoto was a huge fan of) from King Features to base a game off of but couldn't aquire the rights in time. Miyamoto thought using the same dynamic would work and switched the established characters he loved to new unknowns. Popeye was now Jumpman, Olive Oyl became Pauline, and Bluto morphed into Donkey Kong. The outpouring of creativity and the large direction the vision was taking should never be overlooked. Noone had written a story first and a game second at the time. Miyamoto was determined to give the player a true sense of urgency to rescue the damsel in distress. Industry champion Pac-Man provided small cutscenes but the mad scientist's initial game offering was the first where the scenes advanced a story. Being that it was 1980, Donkey Kong was hands down the most massive game anyone had ever attempted, so much so that at points, programmers pitched a bitch as they felt that they were making four games instead of one. While Donkey Kong was definately breaking new ground, some innovations at the time were already present in lesser forms. Common misconceptions are it being the first platform game (Space Panic debuted in '80) and the first to feature multiple levels (space shooter Gorf came out a few months prior), but neither of those were near the scope of this beast.Nintendo was understandably squeamish about the American market after the Radar Scope debacle. so set up two Donkey Kong cabinets in seperate bars close to Seattle, where their U.S. headquarters were located. Within the first week, it became abundantly clear that they had scored a huge hit and went about the batshit insane task of coverting 2,000 Radar Scope units into full-fledged Donkey Kong arcade machines. Nintendo, having confidence in the product but not expecting an overnight phenomenon. had only SIX people to do the coversions. So it goes that in a storehouse in Redmond, WA, somehow, someway, the goal was met and paid off huge. Donkey Kong's rise to the top was nothing short of meteoric. By the summer of 1982, there were over 60,000 Donkey Kong machines in the world, finally cementing Nintendo as a major player for good. 

It's-a me! The LANDLORD! Much more feared than Bowser I think.

There are so many conflicting reports as to where the Donkey Kong name was originated that it's best left up to your imagination. Jumpman, of course, is another story entirely. Having to shift all of their money into the cabinet conversions along with the labor going on in Japan, Nintendo fell behind on rent at the Redmond storehouse and pleaded with the landlord, Mario Segale, to give them some time with the promise rent would be paid. Mr.Segale agreed and his kindness and patience was re-paid by giving Jumpman the now iconic name of Mario. Noone knew at the time that the landlord's namesake would go on to be the most recognizable figure in gaming history. The programming of Mario proved to be the trickiest as a stationary ape and lady wasn't too taxing, but attempting a jumping, running, hammer swinging figure was unheard of. Instead of a mouth, which noone felt looked quite right, a moustache was given. Issues were present in the choices of hairstyle, so the problem was easily rectified with a hat. Last but not least, overalls were designed so the jumping animation came off more realistic. All of these distinctive traits were conjured up within a few months of development and amazingly are all still in place to this day as any changing of the signature look would no doubt be met with extreme rage by The Big N's loyal fans.

If anyone thinks the out-of-place attire on the NA box art was bizarre, check out the weird shit going on with the European Intellivison cover!

Seeing it would've been completely foolish not to bring the smash hit to the new concept of home consoles, Donkey Kong was one of the Japanese Famicom's original three launch titles. In case you've been in Amish country your entire life and just ventured past the fields onto this dazzling internet thing en route to your first arcade, I'll explain further. The gameplay mechanics of Donkey Kong are quite simple. The option other than moving the standard four directions is to jump, which as you can imagine, a guy coined Jumpman will have to do a bit of. There are only three levels on the NES cart (exactly the same game as the FC port) as the "pie level" was cut. It wasn't removed due to a hardware limitation, but rather programmers not knowing exactly how powerful the system was at the time. Sill, Donkey Kong may have been licensed to every major console at the time, but the NES version ruled the roost in terms of faithfulness. Differences other than a missing level are a little less obvious such as cutscenes not taking place, a lack of blue barrels, and the question asked between levels that I couldn't answer until college.

..............you'd be suprised

The difficulty of Donkey Kong is a thing of legend. The fascinating documentary, The King Of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters displays this perfectly as even the most battle scarred gaming gods fear and respect the Billy Badass of barrell-chucking gorillas. On the NES version, you are presented with two modes of difficulty, but c'mon it's fucking Donkey Kong, so they could just as easily be labelled "Hard As Fuck" and "Motherfucker" on the title screen. After being welcomed to game by the theme to the classic Jack Webb show, Dragnet (Miyamoto = off the charts weird on his best day), the fun begins. Mario, before his plumbing/construction/referee days was a carpenter who owned a pet gorilla named Donkey Kong. DK feels he isn't being treated right and instead of running away and living out his life being mistaken for Bigfoot, decides to hit his owned where it hurts, his nookie. Pauline is kidnapped and forcefully taken atop steel girders and away we go. The first level is fairly straightforward as the goal is for Mario to ascend ladders while leaping over barrels that can be brutal in their patterns. Grabbing the hammer can help rack up points and alleviate stress but not much else as once it disappears, the onslaught of barrels continues until reaching the top. The second level is personally the toughest. Mario must jump from moving platform to platform with little room for error and the closer to get to Kong, the real bastard diffculty comes into play. Running under the bouncing whateverthehelltheyare's at the top requires a mutant gift of timing and will wear patience thinner than Victoria Beckham in a room stocked with toilets and plastic fingers. Level three is where Mario has an epiphany by realizing that removing all of the girders from the platforms DK stands upon, the gorilla will plummet to his demise until the next level where we do it all over again. On the way up, a different fireball than previous levels will cause you grief but can be taken ou"t with another trusty hammer. If points are your thing, Pauline has dropped a bunch of crap you can pick up on your way to simian revenge such as an umbrella and a handbag. Sound effects are minimal and you'll develop a love/hate relationship with the indescribable sound made when Mario runs.

"ARRGGHHH!!! WHATEVER YOU DO PAULINE, DON'T LOOK DIRECTLY DOWN!!!"

THE FINAL VERDICT
8/10 As influential as the original Star Trek series may have been, it can appear awfully dated and some of the special effects can even be considered laughable by today's standards. Yet it holds a special place in anyone's heart who was alive in front of a television when it originally aired. That's exactly how I feel about Donkey Kong. I've seen enough summers pass to vividly recall playing the arcade version everytime my mom took me with her to the local laundromat, rewarding my half-assed clothes folding with a shiny quarter that lasted about the time it took for her to get the clean clothes back in the car. It may have been harder than trying to juggle Jello, but I still looked forward to it each and everytime. However by the time the NES rolled out in 1986, it was already five years old and starting to show signs of games passing it by. My heart rates it a 10/10, but my mind says it has three levels when another game released in America eight months earlier, Super Mario Bros, had 32. That's not to say this game doesn't rule, it just isn't a 10.

It doesn't get much more classic does it?

While Donkey Kong remains of the most visible of Nintendo's flagship characters nowadays, it's hard to imagine that he laid dormant for over a decade. Rare, a British video game developer was given the option to resurrect either Kid Icarus or Donkey Kong for an uncoming SNES title and after quite a bit of back and forth, showed Nintendo's original mascot the love he deserved with a title that surpassed anything seen on thar hardware at the time, exactly what he accomplished back in 1981. Dk was brought back as the crusty old codger, Cranky Kong but we'll get to the lineage next time and just be grateful for now that he returned. Besides, Kid Icarus Country doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well does it?

Retro meets retro. Love at first sight so had to share. 

NPC - A.C.Sativa - Caltron 6-In-1

(Caltron 6-In-1, 1992, Caltron)

Ok, here’s what (I hope) will be my first review for NESQuester, Caltron 6-in-1. For those of you who aren’t aware, 6-in-1 is one of the rarest games for the NES, in that special “no way I’ll ever get this unless I win the lottery” club of NES games, like Nintendo World Championships, Stadium Events, and the 3 Panesian 8-bit porno games. It’s widely considered to be the rarest and most expensive NES game that got a full commercial release, with Racketboy quoting it at between $525 and $2,500, and going between $280 and $20,000 (!) on Ebay. Amazon has the Caltron version (I’ll get to that in a second) listing for $1,200 CIB, and $320 loose,  showing either that the collectible market has been affected by the sluggish economy just like everything else, or that people realize that some stupid people were overpaying for games that, while rare, suck ass. I believe that's called a "market self-correction".

"Who's the fucking MORON that ordered our labels smaller than Caltron's?"

Did I mention that there is 2 versions of this game? When Caltron inevitably went under, their remaining stock (the unsold 6-in-1 carts) was sold to a company from Texas called Myriad, who slapped new labels on the carts and packed them in a new box. The Myriad version is for some reason considered to be worth more, despite the two being the EXACT SAME GAME. And not the same game as in “Madden is the same game every year” or “GTA4 for the 360 and the PS3 are the same game”, but physically the same game and same cart, off the same production run. The only difference between the two is that Myriad slapped a different label on their carts, a cheap no-graphics job that was done so poorly that the original Caltron label can still be seen on the right side. Even the game still says “Caltron” on the title screen, and if you do a search on any ROM site for it, it will either come back with no results, or direct you to Caltron 6-in-1.

Does anything REALLY compare to this?

So what about the game itself? As you might have guessed, it’s 6 games on one cart. Because of this, it’s often compared to the bucket of ass we call Action 52. I've heard that this only went for $80, as opposed to $200, though I can’t confirm the MSRP either way. But how does it stack up? Let’s take a look…

Even on the Myriad repackage, the title screen still says Caltron. The Cave Story-esque title music is pretty bitchin' though.

The cart starts off with a pretty generic title screen, and music that will stick in your head long after you’re done playing, the type of music that will instantly get any nostalgic NES fan’s attention, even if he’s never seen the game. You know NES music when you hear it… Anyway; your 6 choices are Cosmos Cop, Magic Carpet 1001, Balloon Monster, Adam and Eve, Porter, and Bookyman.

Space Har...Cosmos Cop is already better than anything on that shitstain released by Active Enterprises.

Cosmos Cop: Right off we get a proper title screen (a title screen inside a tile screen, like some kind of 1992 video game version of Inception or something). This is a clone of Space Harrier for the Master System. It’s a sort of behind the shoulder first/third person shooter. Your player looks like some kind of Transformer, and the playfield moves toward you, while you can move your ship (I’m going to call him a ship for typing convenience) in any direction (2D wise). All kinds of flying ships and saucers move towards you, firing shots that split off in 4 directions and cover a good portion of the screen, and then they bring in meteors too. It’s actually not too bad, though this game is a bit too advanced for the hardware it’s running on. Gotta give credit for ambition, I guess. A turbo controller really helps here, hold down the B button (B shoots your gun, A shoots some bombs that if they make contact will blow up anything near them, you get 20 bombs per stage and unlimited gun fire) and just try to avoid all the enemy’s shots. What’s really unique about this is that you only get 2 lives. I’ve never seen an NES game, or any game for that matter, where it’s game over after 2 lives.

No shortage of crazy shit flying at you in this one!

Magic Carpet 1001: A Gradius/R-Type style shooter, only instead of being a ship flying through space, you’re a kid with a turban on a magic carpet in a desert shooting a bow-and-arrow. Damn, that’s kind of racist. Anyway, it’s easily the best game one the cart, and wouldn’t really be out of place as a stand-alone cart. Unlike Gradius and R-Type, there’s very few power-ups, and that combined with the barrage of enemies makes this game HARD, but in a good way. Again, this is taxing the hardware, often times there are way too many sprites on screen than the NES can handle, with quite a bit a slowdown and flickering. The slowdown will help though, believe me. This is the only game (SPOILER ALERT!) that isn’t a blatant clone.

Blowing more Bubbles than MJ! What fuckers? Too soon?

Balloon Monster: From best to worst, this is a clone of Buster Bros. Idea is that you’re a kid (not a chipmunk, as the box art will tell you) with a shotgun. A big bubble (not a balloon) falls from the top of the room, and you gotta shoot it. Every time you shoot a bubble it breaks up into 4 smaller pieces, and the pieces start bouncing on the floor. The bubbles you’re not shooting bounce lower and lower until they’re rolling into you and killing you (you can only shoot upwards, not to the sides). It’s pretty much unplayable, a bad concept with ass controls. It’s still better than every game on Action 52 put together.

Ah, my folks used to always tell me the tale of Adam, Eve, and snakes with...balloons

Adam and Eve: This is a clone of Balloon Fight, which itself is a clone of Joust. Yep, it’s a clone of a clone. Basic premise is that you’re a little kid with a balloon strapped to him, and you have to float up and land on top of some floating snakes (also with balloons) twice to kill them, though the snakes look more like the Berkley Power Bait scented fake worms that you’ll find at any tackle shop. If a snake lands on you, or you hit the points of the bamboo-like structure that makes up the stages your balloon gets smaller. 3 hits and you’re dead, but there’s yellow balloons that float around that when landed on cough out what I’m guessing is helium tanks, land on those to make the balloon bigger, thereby recovering lost health. The yellow balloons also spit out apples that give you points. The controls suck, and the “snakes” tend to hang out at the top of the screen, making this a lot harder and more time consuming than it really should be.

Porter must be the sound Lolo makes when he cops a squat.

Porter: A puzzle game, where you have to put boxes into squares marked with an “X”. This is also a clone, though the name of the game they’re ripping off escapes me at the moment. Pretty hard because you can only push the blocks (by holding A), not pull them. Comes with a handy self-destruct button if you fuck up, but the programmers fucked up by putting it on the B button, instead of Select or some other place you won’t constantly hit it by accident. That’s about it. Oh, the graphics suck, especially by 1992 standards.

If the game didn't resemble feces already, welcome to a game slathered in fiberous brown!

Bookyman: What the fuck kind of title is that? This is a pretty much direct copy of the old Williams arcade game Make Trax. Only here you’re a beetle. You have to cover the entire maze while avoiding the enemies. It’s sort of like Pac-Man, I guess. There’s some comb looking things on every stage, and if you hit them they shoot you up the path and kill any enemy in your way. It’s a bit harder than the old arcade game, but otherwise it’s pretty faithful to the original. For some reason you get 9 lives. What is with this cart? It’s was pretty much accepted at this point that you get 3 lives in a video game (a precedent established a long, long, long time ago by fucking pinball games in the 70’s), but here you get 9 for this game, 2 for Cosmos Cop, 5 for Magic Carpet 1001 and Balloon Monster… Makes no sense…

If you find this in your garage, do ALOT of fucking. You now can afford children and college. Fuck away!

Overall Score: 5/10. Had this game been released in 1987 or so, we probably would have called it “the shit”, had that expression existed at the time. But it came out in 1992. The SNES came out in 1990, the Genesis was 4 years old by this point. Shit, the PlayStation was only 2 years away. Even so, Magic Carpet 1001 alone is better than half of the NES games, and 2 other not-horrible games on the same cart means that this game doesn’t deserve the reputation it gets. On the scale of unlicensed garbage (defining “unlicensed garbage” as any non NOA-approved game not made by Tengen or Codemasters) it gets a 9/10. Chiller and Krazy Kreatures might be better than this, but it’s better than anything else made by AVE or AGC, and totally blows away any of the trash made by Color Dreams/Wisdom Tree or Sachen. I just chose a random unlicensed game hoping I could shit all over it with lots of f-bombs (still got plenty of those in) and what not. Seems I picked the wrong one… Maybe next time, there’s always Wally Bear and the NO! Gang.

*sniff sniff* I can smell it from here!

(Everyone give it up to guest reviewer A.C. Sativa for a killer review! I sincerely look forward to seeing more from him. I was going to refrain from any credit but it would kill me if he got blamed in case the picture captions sucked, so those were done by me. Again, big ups for knocking it out of the park on this one because if you didn't, I was going to ban your IP from my site forever and link you to a goat-fetish site everytime you tried. All kidding aside, awesome shit! Anyone else want a crack? Email me nesquester@yahoo.com)

NESquest #19 - Urban Champion

(Urban Champion, June 1986, Nintendo)

Everything has a beginning. A polite smile met across a table can be the earliest sign of love, a single seed is possibly the start of a fruitful garden, and the entire Taco Bell menu is ususally the genesis for some white-knuckled, sweaty, "why God why" screaming shits. Today's Black Box offering is where Nintendo's 2D fighting genre's roots lie, Urban Champion. Welcome to a full 8 months after launch day as "Wave Two" is upon us.

Think this looks antique? Trust me, it doesn't get a whole hell of alot better.

Urban Champion has roots of its own planted in the classic Game & Watch series. These were handheld portable games created by Gunpei Yokoi, who has gotten plenty of love here, designed to give the feeling of an arcade title in the palm of your hands. They were great fun for the time and even got recognition as a very strange character in Super Smash Bros in later years. The Game & Watches strongly resembled the much later design of the DS, proving that Yokoi was from the future and we weren't quite ready for him. One such title was Boxing, later changed to Punch-Out to cash in on Nintendo's at-the-time arcade phenomenon. Lightbulbs went off aplenty at Nintendo's R&D 1 department and the think tank decided to attempt to translate the controls of Boxing to the recently launched NES with Urban Champion.

"All hail the BAMF of all bookstores!" 

Cutting right to the chase, this game is notorious for being the equivalent of someone opening the cart, shitting in it, closing it back up, and shoving it inside your console. Is it really that bad? In short, yes. You begin with two nameless fighters who have a humongous unknown beef  with each other and wish to settle it using good old fashioned fisticuffs. You're given a light punch, hard punch, and two levels of block, which are worthless. A stamina meter also is present but never comes into play because your goal is not to lay your foe out like any other game normally involving pugilism ends. Instead, we must master an ancient technique perfected and taught in front of Japanese barber shops and discount stores for centuries where you hit your target so hard, they do a 7.9 Olympic backwards roll into the next screen. This continues ad nauseum until you send the grasshopper on your right flying into a manhole cover. Along the way, crazed dwellers of the properties you're fighting in front of wish to reclaim their street and attempt to drop flower pots on your noggin. If life was low enough to where I'm living on the second floor of a fucking barber shop, free UFC in my front yard would be more than welcome, but that's just me. Adding to the absurdity are the random visits by the police, prompting both fighters to walk to either side of the building and stare at the sky innocently until the lawdogs have safely passed by. Could you imagine this crap going on in Mortal Kombat? "GET OVER HERE! Wait, the po-po's". The graphics are just as uninspired as the scenery ever really changes except the palette swaps and signs on each building. As unoriginal as those get, the fighter variety is even worse as there isn't any whatsoever. You fight the same green haired clone from round one to round one million. Audio is just as bad as a lazy tune accompanies the "action" while an out of place happy melody plays inbetween rounds. Like most the early titles, there is no ending, but unlike Mach Rider, after round 99, I still could give two fucks what happened to this character after the dust settled.

If it were for comedic effect, I would've died laughing. But it wasn't. So I didn't.

THE FINAL VERDICT
2/10 A complete misfire by Nintendo in every way. The game is just goddamned boring and while it may be fine to waste 5 minutes or so on today, this was a time where games were major purchases and kids got stuck with what they had. The Big N knew this and still unleashed this fecal folly onto the world. There exists no sense of anything more than button mashing until your brain hits that special point where it stops and asks you "why the hell are we doing this?" Urban Champion may as well have been named "Paper, Rock, Scissors". The fighter you control was never seen in any form or fashion other than being a level in Tetris DS and good riddance, you worthless shitstain of a great era.

If Mario hadn't eaten the mushroom first, I shudder to think...

NESquest #18 - Golf

(Golf, October 1985, Nintendo)

Good old Nintendo! If you thought Pinball was a shameless shill with its box art, witness a Black Box title made up to look like Mario himself was in the starring role. More on that later so for now, throw on your most hideous slacks, grab a funny hat, and let's take a quest through the last of the launch day titles left to review, Golf.

I'm about to get more balls wet than "Cavestretch Party Night" at a Kardashian house.

Though it seems (pardon poorly produced pun) predicated par (alliteration as well) for golf games nowadays to display a power meter, this was the title where the power system made its debut. It's Golf, so you dig into 18 different holes with a set of clubs in an attempt to get a little white ball in the little black hole really fucking far away. No dragons, eggplants, or fireballs to worry about here as they are replaced with feared foes like water and sand. To add variety, the two player game gives the option of stroke play or match play. I do have to come to Golf's rescue in one regard as quite a few reviewers have razed it's difficulty concerning how far a given club will hit the ball and to that I propose you put the emulators down for a moment as the game comes with a nice, shiny manual complete with a chart detailing estimated yards each club will send the ball. 

Game manuals have info! Trust me!

The courses themselves are vibrant and damned challenging at times. Wind direction and velocity also play a major role and if you're caught going Happy Gilmore without first checking the way the wind doth blow, grab another ball, because yours just landed at the bottom of Lake Nintendo. What I found most unsettling was that even with the knowledge of how far the ball should go, it doesn't always work out in my favor. Sometimes, the ball even seems to become self-aware and mid-air can treat a 10mph wind like a hurricane gust. Like Tennis, the ball is given an excellent amount of depth so that it's not just a moving dot a la 10 Yard Fight. Also similar to Tennis is the fact that there is no music whatsoever, but in golf, the silence is a much better fit. Prior to questing through this one, I had little to no knowledge of how to play golf, but honestly, of all the Sport Series, this is title I enjoyed the most. Sure, there are times you'll swear the destination hole is a Sarlaac Pit and the ball is Boba Fett but why make it too easy? Putting is a blast as the creative solution was to make arrows on the green itself to emulate the slopes in a 2-D world. There is a definate learning curve here but sticking with it and getting your first birdie offers a distinct feeling of reward games need more of.

Doubt I'd complain if a game where you only got to putt was released.

THE FINAL VERDICT
7/10 Just the fact that I enjoyed playing Golf more than the sports titles, whose rules I began much more familiar with, should say alot. The wind can be unforgiving and some of the courses are straight from Hell itself, but the fun factor never fades away. The lucky shots that can be pulled off to conquer the rougher of courses will make you jump for joy when they happen, which is honestly one of the greatest moments anyone can have as a gamer. I doubt you'll see the NESquester playing a full 18 at a course near you soon, but as far as the Sport Series games go, Golf easily rose above to claim the title of the best and I see myself going back to kill time on the greens more often than not.

It's-a me! Ossan!

Remember how I opened by bursting the bubble concerning the very Mario-looking guy on the cover NOT being Mario? What you see there is the second player, as the first sports a white shirt and hat with blue pants. Sure as hell looks like Mario and the world for years believed that he was indeed our favorite Italian plumber but meet the star of Golf, Ossan! In 2008, Ossan accomplished what not even Mach Rider could do and staged a comeback. Captain Rainbow, a Japan exclusive Wii title, featured a hero who traveled from island to island helping old NES characters out of their own personal predicaments. Never ask me about the Birdo chapter. Ever. So, the Captain runs across none other than Ossan, who greets the hero outside of his golf themed pad by...vigorously scratching his balls. Yes, you read that right. Ossan's fabled clubs were misplaced and he requires help finding them to resume his golf game. Seeing as he never had a caddy, he stuffs his golf balls down his trousers, where they become rather abrasive over time and start to itch. Every good itch needs to be scratched and to say Ossan isn't shy about it is an understatement. Maybe Mach Rider should count his blessings he WASN'T revived...

Golf - Endorsed by Action 52 programmers worldwide!

NESquest #17 - Duck Hunt

(Duck Hunt, October 1985, Nintendo)

Arguably the most fondly remembered of the Light Gun Series, here is a title that needs no introduction. Coming equipped with a ton of history along with one of the most despised characters in gaming history, Duck Hunt.

A happenin' Friday night in Japan!

The innovations behind the electro-mechanical series of games were previously covered with Wild Gunman. Predating even that was a wild creation dubbed the Laser Clay Shooting System. Nintendo intended this to be its cash cow years before the NES, but one hell of a recession hit overseas and instead, they lost millions. The premise was the same as the electro-mechanicals, except they was presented on a much grander scale than an arcade cabinet. Nintendo bought up a significant number of deserted bowling alleys in Japan and converted them into virtual shooting ranges. Overhead projectors would flash the image of a duck on the forest, valley, or mountain backdrop. A successful shot and the image would appear to fall to the ground of the varied landscape and a point would be tallied. The game proved to be an overnight sensation and Nintendo, not one to pass up a good thing, quickly bought up every bowling alley they could find. Unfortunately, the 1973 oil crisis hit and Japan as a whole took a major financial hit. No longer able to get even preliminary construction funded, the losses were huge and took years to recoup. 

How did the Zapper NOT take off in the 70s?

Thankfully, the vision wasn't completely lost, as "mini laser clay" systems debuted a couple of years later, giving the same thrills of the original on a smaller scale for an economy on a budget. A home version of Duck Hunt was even released with a mini projector and an early version of the Zapper.

Avian slaughter at its finest.

Roaring into 1985, Nintendo decides that on top of Wild Gunman, it would drag the Duck Hunt concept out of the mothballs for it's shiny new system. The game's rule are simple, choose one or two ducks as target practice and let 'er rip! Three shots per round are given and if you fail to bag any fowl, you get the pleasure of meeting the object of intense psychotic hatred for many youngsters, the "Duck Hunt Dog". He wasn't the first character to laugh in our face for below average play but he sure is the one most remembered. The snarky hand over the mouth and the "you're a dipshit" giggle is known to just eat at your soul. Prior to the start of the round, you are given a preset number of ducks to hit in order to advance. The firing sometimes seems a little more off than other titles and there will times you swear on all you hold dear that you hit the damned duck, only to have the dog act like an asshole yet again. The gameplay is easy and effective but lacks the variety of other Light Gun titles. Clay shooting is the third mode but is far less fun than it's cartridge companion and can pretty much be gathered completely by a screenshot. Graphics are cartoony without looking cheap and the music is top notch on top of being as recognizable as any other sound effects out there.

Yup, it's exactly how it looks. Ho-hum.

THE FINAL VERDICT
7/10 Not as much variety and a wonky hit detection put this just a notch below Hogan's Alley and Wild Gunman in my book but still a fantastic title. In the first Action Set, this was the pack-in title along with Gyromite, but of course is much better known is one half of a cart shared with the saintly Super Mario Bros. Still worth a play to this day and for nostalgic purposes, there are few better.

Worth. Every. Fucking. Penny.

As a young lad, before the internet existed, there was a Nintendo Help Line in Redmond, WA. The number was 255-806-7529 and that's without looking it up. My friend at the time, Kenny, got permission from his mom for us to place a call to ask a question of the game counselors. The question that was burning inside of two eager 12 year olds with telephones? "Can you kill the dog in Duck Hunt?" Years later, I found that in the arcade "Vs" version, you can shoot the shit out of that bastard! It counts as a miss but who gives a fuck? Feel free to insert a handful of quarters and light that little bane of everyone's existence up for hours! The dog also had a cameo in Barker Bill's Trick Shooting where he could also be shot but, personally, it just doesn't look anything like him, and I've stared into that soulless parasite's eyes many times. KILL!

The version of the game that kids would've BEGGED for in the 80s.

NESquest #16 - 10 Yard Fight

(10 Yard Fight, October 1985, Nintendo)

So far in the NES Sport Series, we've taken looks at both Tennis and Baseball with less than stellar results. Could this be the savior to ascend the series out of complete poopdom? Let's open up another Black Box and sneak a peek at the system's first ever football game, 10 Yard Fight.

And who are the three guys in the back blocking exactly?

Initially released in the arcades in 1983, 10 Yard Fight was the brainchild of the good folks over at Irem who made their name from the classic Moon Patrol. This would mark it as one of the few early titles to be created by another company, yet published by The Big N. How did a team of Japanese programmers wrap their heads around American Football in enough time to get a game made you ask? Well, since 1971, Japan has had the X-League, their own version of the NFL complete with a championship game dubbed the (I'm not making this shit up) Rice Bowl. The X-League also showcases some of the gnarliest team names ever witnessed such as the All-Tokyo Gas Creators, the Asahi Soft Drinks Challengers, and the Panasonic Electric Works Impulse. The Buffalo Bills doesn't sounds quite as bizarre when placed next to those odd squads. I digress. Fast forward two years later and Nintendo was up to their ears trying to get games ready for the launch so instead of depleting the already limited manpower to create a new football title, they struck a deal with Irem to publish their established arcade hit.

SEE?

For its era, 10 Yard Fight was certainly the most advanced available football game on the market. That doesn't necessarily make it good. I'm sure if I was a castaway on a lonely island faced with the choice of either dung-beetle and squirrel for dinner, the squirrel will look like a 32 oz Porterhouse. The gameplay is 9 on 9, not automatic grounds for a game to be rated subpar due to Tecmo Bowl having the same limitation. No playbook is available as you can either lob the rock to a running back and call it a running play with the B button or pass to an open receiver with the A. The problem is that you'll find that unless you're certifiably insane, you'll never want to pass. The cornerbacks were all apparently cloned from Spider-Man and it is doubly bad as there was no depth given to the ball. That means if you throw the pigskin anywhere in the vicinity of these little bastards, its an instant interception. Running isn't as broken but at times you'll need the extra blocker to make his way into position which takes FOREVER. When I say forever, I mean you can probably get through a battle on any given JRPG in the time it takes the blocker to stumble to where needed. The game clock is divided into two fast counting thirty minute halves, which I appreciate since I'd probably still playing the game of Baseball I began if I didn't say to hell with it. The difficulty is ranked from high school to Super Bowl and is presented well with different uniform and endzone graphics for each. On a sour note, it gives the illusion that it is similar to a career mode, as any other team you defeat gives you the message "You are on your way to the Super Bowl!" but guess what? NESquester kicked the Super Bowl team's candy asses before this review was started and was greeted by the screen below...

...but...I...just...

THE FINAL VERDICT

4/10 Even giving the benefit of the doubt that it was 1986 like every game was given thus far, this just wasn't a very good game then and is more than likely played in psyche wards to study how ADHD medication works now. Originally, it looked like a million bucks in the 1983 arcade market but already showed its age by the time the NES rolled it out. My friends and I were game critics in our own rights in 1986 on the schoolgrounds of Houston and while we could never quite agree on which He-Man character was the strongest, we were unanimous in the fact that 10 Yard Fight fucking sucked.

But it sure made for one sweetass looking cabinet!