Including and especially the bad ones
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platform – Top-Scroll
Few games capture the true essence of the Esquimaux peoples of the arctic circle, expressing the spirit and character of the proud native heritage they all bear within them. This game isn’t one of them. This is a game about hitting polar bears with a hammer.
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Shooting – Zapper
Growing up I wanted to be a great many things. I wanted to be an engineer, I wanted to own a pet shop, I wanted to be an investment banker (no, really) – a great many things. I never once, though, wanted to be an officer of the law. You know why? Because people shoot them!
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: R.O.B.
What? You seriously think I’m going to go on Ebay, Craigslist or any of the other repositories of discarded junk that exist on the internet and elsewhere, dig up an R.O.B. and play one of these games with it? I’m sorry, do I really look that stupid to you? R.O.B. was a novelty item. I had the misfortune of encountering one when I was a kid, and remember wondering what kind of individual would use a robot that played exactly two games (badly) as a substitute for friends.
John’s Rating: Gyromite (aka Robot Gyro) and Stack Up (aka Robot Block) 0.0 out of 5.0
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Sports – Golf
I have never actually played the sport of golf. I’d like to try sometime – I understand that playing golf is a prerequisite for a career requiring any degree of PR – but I just haven’t ever had the opportunity. I once hit a golf ball with a golf club and, in an impressive feat of pure beginners luck, hit the post I was told to aim for.
But I’m skeptical of video games that try to take an already relaxing and generally unathletic* activity and turn it into a relaxing and generally unathletic game experience.
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Racing – Side-view
If you were anything like me as a kid, you wanted a dirtbike. You probably weren’t anything like me as a kid, but you probably still wanted a dirtbike because, let’s face it, dirtbikes are cool, and every kid wanted one. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably the kind of person who thinks that fishing is a sport. Of course, my parents didn’t have the money to just up and buy me a dirtbike, and given my incredible penchant for falling off my regular bike and injuring myself, I think it’s fair to say that they have other motives for failing to get me one. Thus, video games were the closest I would ever get to living that particular dream.
I remember liking this game a lot as a child, but that I didn’t remember playing it much, which is strange, since there’s a fairly extensive list of great and not-so-great games I remember playing for hours on end (yes, I have vivid childhood memories of playing video games).Now, as an adult, I can understand how that came to be.
It gets old. Fast.
No, really, it’s a very good game – to say otherwise is to be a fool or a liar! The controls are tight and logical, the graphics are sufficient, the sounds are generally not obnoxious and the whole thing is intuitive enough to jump into without reading a manual (which is an important feature in a post-game-manual era, as well as back when rentals were common and commonly devoid of important parts).
The crushing shortcomings, however, lie in features you’ll find yourself wishing it had. You’ll wish it had two-player simultaneous play, you’ll wish it allowed you to save more than one custom track. You’ll wish that there were more terrain features to put on your custom tracks.
John’s Rating: I give this game a 3.0 out of 5.0. Better replay value or a two-player mode would have easily put this up to a 4.0, but I really can’t justify it in light of the fact that I can explore everything the game has to offer in a single afternoon. All in all, it’s an enjoyable and nostalgia-inducing romp that I see no reason to repeat.