Including and especially the bad ones
Year: 1986
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platform
Remember when you were a kid and balloons, powered by your imagination, could hoist you off the ground and into the stratosphere? Well, screw you, kid! That requires about a fafrillion balloons because physics, bitch! But you know where one can frequently take refuge from the doldrums of everyday physical reality? Video games, that’s where!
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Sports – Tennis
I believe that, since my childhood, there has been not only a general tendency to make games easier (which is super-good) but also a dumbing down of expectations. Players were once required to control every aspect of the game’s interaction, whereas now there exist a good many games that take parts that would have once fell out of the player’s purview out of their hands. Take, for example, the Nintendo version of Tennis vs. the analogous Wii Sports subgame.
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
Duck hunt is a classic. Let’s get that out of the way right now. The reason that Duck Hunt is a classic really doesn’t have a lot to do with how good the game is, but rather the fact that, for most of us, it was the only reason that our NES came bundled with a Zapper.
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Edutainment
The underlying concept of edutainment is that if you’re having fun while you learn, you will always love learning, and I’ll admit that the idea is sound. At the very least, I know that *I* enjoy learning, which has always driven me to learn pointless things that will never further my chosen career path (though at times I consider deviating to something more cosmopolitan than the legal profession such as concierge, game show contestant, or crazy homeless guy).
I digress. Allow me to introduce you to a sound argument against the proliferation of edutainment.
I’ve been playing Donkey Kong since my Atari days, and Donkey Kong Junior since only shortly thereafter (the aforementioned Gordon owned it, and I was thrilled by the delightful simian action it presented). I will also state that my mother, being of sound mind, never made the mistake of purchasing for me any game with “Math” in the title. So, with that in mind – namely that my childhood was untarnished by this game – this awful programming turd actually retroactively damaged my memories. I think I might actually like Donkey Kong less because of this.
So you’re a monkey and you solve math problems by competing with a second player. There really isn’t a single player mode, which is fine – you won’t want one anyway. That’s not to say you’ll want to play this with your friends, mind you. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you play this with someone, you’re legally obliged to refer to them as your “victim.”
John’s Rating: All in all, I give this game a 1.0 out of 5.0, but only because I already decided that if something can be reasonably classified as a “game,” I shall be obliged to rate it at least a 1.0.
Dark JCO’s Rating: I can’t believe that this is even classified as a game. It doesn’t have an ending screen or a single-player mode. It’s barely playable as a multiplayer game. If you want to teach people math, just teach math! 1.0 out of 5.0.
Lord Nightmare’s Rating: I like Donkey Kong Junior Math. It’s colorful and interesting. I like Math. I like little monkeys that climb the ropes and stuff. I just can’t find anyone who will play it with me. e^πi out of 5.0