#9 The Addams Family - Pugsley's Scavanger Hunt

Those arent inspired by Mario at all!

Title: The Addams Family - Pugsley's Scavanger Hunt
Year: 1993
Developer: Ocean
Publisher: Ocean
Genre: Platformer

Heres the second Addams Family game released at the end of the NES life span. I really think at this point a lot of game developers just stopped trying. Pugsleys Scavanger Hunt was a port of the SNES version, but at the same time...it wasnt. It took the name and levels, but used the game plot of the first Addams Family game, replacing Gomez with Pugsley. The result is just horrible.

Remember in the last review I criticized Oceans rendition of the Addams Family theme song? Well the title screen of Pugsleys Scavanger Hunt has a very nice, up beat 8 bit version (in my opinion) If you want your opinion of this game to stay any higher than this point, dont press start.

I thought something broke initially, a glitch perhaps, when the game started up. Pugsley was standing outside the mansion and...I couldnt hear any music! "No...the developers couldnt have..." I walked inside and..still no music! What gives? Did the composer for this game spend all his time making the opening music that he couldnt be bothered making any other songs? And whats with the annoying sound effects. It sounds like im playing an old Game and Watch game. At one point I thought I heard music, but it was just the rhythmic sounds of some obstacles.

You were paid to make music Barry. Why isnt there any music?!

Yeah this wasnt ripped from Super Mario Bros 2. Nope, not at all.

Pugsley controls like hes covered in grease. The damn kid just cant stand still. When you try and stop, he skids around making an annoying drum roll sound. He's so slippery that he can't even stand on a hill without sliding down them. I even found out by tapping the B button while standing still, Pigsley would slowly slide across the screen to the right. Why? What purpose does this have in the game? Maybe it has something to do with these weird ass stairs they made. They are a huge curve. You walk up them by walking across them but...whats this? You fall off after walking up half way. You can press all the directions you want, the game only leys you walk half way up, then you must jump to the next floor. But you can walk down them perfectly fine.

that must be grease splashing off his feet.

Anyways, the game differs from the first in that you arent actually looking for the family members. You run through a level and fight a boss. Its pretty simple, so im not sure how it qualifies as a scavenger hunt. The first game was a better scavenger hunt so whatever. The bosses are pretty easy, and more or less are just a matter of learning their pattern and stomping them till they run out of health. The last boss was farily difficult due to his massive size, and constantly dropping hammers from the ceiling. I found that with him the faster you jump on him the better. Speaking of difficult bosses, the chain room leading to him was actually a challenge. There are no enemies at all if you dont count the fish in the water, but the spikes covering nearly everything made it more than just a simple run through stage. I lost nearly all my lives trying to navigate that room.

You beat the game and thats it, good job pugsley.

Rating: F

Difficulty: 6/10

Completion Time: 1 hour

#8 The Addams Family

 

Title: The Addams Family
Year: 1992
Developer: Ocean
Publisher: Ocean
Genre: Platformer

Whether or not you like The Addams Family, Im sure you know the tune. I think everybody knows that damn catchy tune. Well, Ocean butchered it in The Adams Family on the NES, and it really sets the tone for this generic platform collecting game.

You play as Gomez, and your goal, is to rescue all of the family members. Gomez controls are ok, and for the most part are pretty tight. But the hit detection is god awful. If you dont land perfectly on top of an enemy, you take damage. Which brings me to my next big flaw. In 99% of games Ive played, you get hit, you flash and are temporarily invincible. In The Addams Family you dont get that luxury. If you get hit, you will take damage untill you get the fuck away, or die.

At least Ocean was kind enough to give out 3 lives and 3 continues! Not!!! Running around the Addams Family property is more than deadly, its just outright frustrating at times. The furnace and freezer rooms in particular have jumps that just have to be done perfectly or you fall through the platform to your death. The freezer has ice blocks to jump on that barely stay afloat long enough for you to jump across. Too many times I was making the first block, only to sink to death once the second vanished beneath me.

I was stuck at these two screens for a very very long time

I made the mistake of focusing on rescuing the family members and not collect money because I thought money=points and points=worthless. I was wrong. When you rescue all the members except Morticia, you head into a seceret room with a river. At the end is a scale it takes 1 million dollars to open. What happens if you dont? Well then you have to go through the entire game and find any seceret rooms you missed!  Whee......

The game itself isnt overly difficult, and if you find the Thing, he helps as a sort of shield, but only 3 times. The kitchen, furnace, and freezer are the most difficult areas, with a constant barrage of forks, knives, pots and pans flying at you in the kitchen. The furnace has fire balls flying everywhere, and a few pretty long jumps. The freezer sicks the most. Gomez really does feel like hes walkin on ice, sliding around and responding poorly. It makes the difficult jumps and avoiding enemies harder than they already are.

This game gets frustrating from the combination of the poor hit detection and zero hit cool down.  Thankfully Ocean supplied us with an infinite lives cheat, because there are only two, maybe three extra lives, and almost zero chance of restoring your health. If the developer thinks their game is frustrating enough to require an infinite lives code, then it must be either pleasantly hard, or just flat out frustrating.

The boss of the game is Tully...I think? And uncle Fester. From what I read if the game follows one of the movies, Fester is actually dead and the Fester in the end is an imposter. You can choose to defeat both of them, or if youre quick enough you can skip past then, climb the ladder, and save Morticia before the spikes crush her. Actually, they wont. Theyre more for effect than anything else.

Im offended, Ocean used my name as a stock name for the lowest score!

Rating: C-

Difficulty: 4/10

Completion Time: 45min

#7 Abadox

 Yep, thats the tongue of this sick planet eater.

Title: Abadox
Year: 1990
Developer: Natsume
Publisher Milton Bradley
Genre: Shoot em Up

When you first think of a game developed by Natsume you think of their popular Harvest moon line, and being published by Milton Bradley must mean its family fun entertainment...right?

Well fortunately Abadox is none of those, and Im actually suprised Nintendo allowed such a graphic game on the NES back when they were known for censoring and not allowing so many things in their games. When you first power up Abadox youre greeted by a blood covered title (and I dont mean a couple drips, the damn thing looks like it beat a man to death)

The opening sequence starts off with a very creepy tune, your character teleports out of the main ship or something, and you blast off towards...HOLY SHIT WTF IS THAT?! Yeah, it looks like a giant tangle of intestines with a massive razor toothed mouth. The subtitle of Abadox is "The Deadly Inner War" and thats not metaphoric, its literal.

The first stage really gives you a taste of how messed up this game is. Your ebemies range from floating eyeballs, jaws, and what appears to be exploding tumors rolling on the ground. To top it off, the entire stage is made out of entrails.

Man this shit mustve given kids horrible nightmares as in the 90s

The stages only become more disturbing from here on out. Bosses range from an inside out mutated canine of some sorts, to meat faces, giant parasitic worms or fish...or something...but theyre all easy if you pick up all the power ups.
With the exception of the first mini boss you meet in the first stage, and the worm mini boss in the second stage are probably harder than any of the bosses in the entire game. It seems most of the bosses have a blind spot that you can duck into and blast them without getting hit. The fish/larve creature for instance; itd target is the tip of its hooked tail. It also blasts laser beams from it so a frontal assault is suicide. Instead (if you have the spread shot) hang as close as you can to the side, just enough to where your bits hit it and your spread shots and missles hit it, and boom its dead. The giant robot man in stage 5 had the same trick by his head.

Control wise the game is ok. At times your ship feels a little twitchy, and light taps occasionally crush you into the walls in the vertical scrolling stages. The weapon firing is annoying though. I understand they were probably trying to keep the sprite count down on the screen, but 3 shots on screen is just frustrating!!! Why limit such a strong game with such a limiting shot count?

The stages themselves are challenging, and become borderline bullet hell. The problem is the game begins to lag to the point that even a moderate tapping of the b button hardly causes your shits to fire. Some stages had me seeing the game over screen way too much.  particularly the lsdt one, where they decide to pull out all the stops and throw some of the toughest enemies in the game. There are green flames that combine into a phoenix like creature, however, hit a flame, and they all start homing in on you unless you can blast them all away.

Theres plenty of power ups to defend yourself from everything 

The music in Abadox is great, from the intro sequence to the ending, it never gets boring or dull, to me at least. Also, now that I mentioned the ending, its a race to escape the monster before it explodes. You collect some speed power ups to maneuver faster, then dodge obstacles as the screen flies by at breakneck speeds. After that, sit back and watch the giant ball of guts explode.

Im still suprised Nintendo let this game go through without the gore getting toned down, but it seems one part was edited. When you save the princess from the core (always gotta save a princess) in the japanese release, shes naked. In the us release shes wearing a red kimono. So I guess Nintendos fine with blood, guts, and dismembered organs, but not pixilated, featureless skin. Not in America at least.

Rating: B-

Difficulty 6/10

Completion Time: 45-60min

#6 8 Eyes (Review Only)

Title: 8 Eyes
Year: 1990
Developer: Thinking Rabbit
Publisher: Taxan
Genre: Action Platformer

Let me start with a warning...WARNING THIS GAME WILL MAKE YOU RIP YOUR HAIR OUT. Now this is just a review. Why? Well, after being too frustrated with the controls and cryptic puzzles I threw Game Genie at it and made 3 wishes to play through this. Ill have to revisit this game for a legitimate play through another day.

You play as Orin and his hawk, Cutrus to retrieve 8 jewels know as the 8 Eyes so the King can rebuild the Earth? Wait...let me read this again...Youre in a post apocalyptic future that was nearly destroyed by nuclear blasts and the jewels were formed at the site of the blasts...

Well fuck I thought this took place in ancient times. I mean, stone labrinths, gour weapons are swords, you fight stuff that looks like they were from the ancient era like knights. How can this be the future? Well, that explains the massively out of place, and seemingly useless hand gun in this game.

Ok now on to the game. You start off being able to choose from 7 different stages, but there is an order that works best, as each boss has a weakness to a particular sword or something like that.

The music in this game is alright, as are the sound effects, and visually its not too bad looking either, but none of that is the issue. The issue here consists of the horrible hit detection, horrible controls, and cryptic puzzles that make me wanna scream.

I dont understand. You have a drink with the boss after each level.

Every single enemy you face, except those that fly, will hit you, over and over again. They have a farther reach than you, so fighting them is near impossible without getting wacked. Fighting consists of finding an opening, rushing in for an attack, then running away. Almost no enemy you must fight like this are a one hit kill. Most take 2 or 3 hits minimum. And most of the time, you think youre far enough away, but get hit anyways. The sprites wont even touch and your charscter will begin flashing his life away.

Only Cutrus can kill some baddies

As for the controls...b is attack a is everything else. What I mean by that, is a is both jump, AND special weapon. So if you dont make sure to select an empty item slot, youll find yourself constantly using up your items by accidentally hitting up a or down a. Controlling Cutrus is simple enough, up b lets him fly off your shoulder and attack, down b calls him back.

My other problem with this game is that items are hidden in random blocks, most of which seem to only be accessible by having Cutrus attack the walls. Without knowing where the items are, especially the clues, it becomes all but impossible to complete.

Later down the line Ill have to replay 8 Eyes and beat itbproperly, maybe even try beating the 2nd quest accessible with the password "taxantaxan" yeah, real creative password there Taxan.

What the hell is this thing?!?

Rating: D
Difficulty: 8/10

Thank god this game is done with, for now...I wasnt going to even post this since i hadnt beaten the game properly, but l felt that I should at the very least review the games, even if they arent beaten. I will return to this once my skills become more polished.

#5 720°

Why does he look naked and why is he wearing an afro wig... 

Ahhh yeahhhh bustin out that 720.

Title: 720°

Year: 1989

Developer: Beam Software

Publisher: Mindscape

Genre: Sports

I lied, the one sports game I do usually enjoy are skateboard and bmx games like Tony Hawk or Dave Mirra. 720° is not Tony Hawk Pro Skater, not even close. As a matter of fact, if young Tony picked this up in the late 80's Im surr he would have been insulted.

720° has 4 events, and 4 classes. You start out with 3 tickets to enter each event, ranging from the downhill, slalom, jump, and ramp (half pipe). The controls are simple enough d pad controls direction and spin, A is jump and B initiates tricks on the ramp. you have cash to buy upgraded shoes, helmets, pads, and boards, but nothing really seemed to improve this garbage attempt at a skating game.

The 3/4 view makes moving around a nightmare, and causing you to crash often if you attempt tricks on the main park map. Speaking of the map, its zoomed in a bit too close to easily find where you want to go, and it has a time limit. Exceed the time limit and the words "Skate or Die" appear above, hurrying you to enter an event, or die by a swarm of angry bees that transform after a while into a medical syringe or hammer. Get hit and its game over.

Hurry up little orange dude, those bees are pissed.

The downhill event sounds simple enough, skate down a series of slopes as fast as you can and get the gold. But the camera angle and controls make it nearly impossible to not crash. Most of the time you'll turn from left to right, and crash the instant you land. Or worse, fall off the end of the platform into the water. The game places you at the very edge of the platform, causing you to crash almost instantly, over, and over, and over...

This happens often. I dont know why he bothers getting back up

The slalom is by far the easiest. Skate along a path, and hit the flags. I dont even think you have to go between them, as just touching any part seems to be good enough. Instant gold 100% of the time.

The jump event is just that. Big downhill into a jump. Like the skiers do. Do some spins and stick the landing and the gold is yours.

By far the most broken part of the game howerver is the ramp. The view shifts to a more sode scrilling view. B does spins and other tricks...I guess. I managed to land a spin once or twice, and you can do hand plants on the lip and hand stands on your board, but good luck with that. 9/10 times you'll fall. 0 points, no medals, do not care.

You do not win, you never will.

If you get enough points to get the required tickets to enter all 4 events, you'll move up a class and do...the same thing. The courses dont really change too much, so you'll most likely score a gold in slalom and jump, silver or bronze in the down hill, and nothing in the ramp. repeat 4 times and you win! Takes an entire 5-10 minutes to beat. I replayed class 4 half a dozen times thinking if i got better medals the game would progress to class 5...I should have known better.

So what you have here is a horrible attempt at making a skating game, with broken controls, ear bleeding music, and the difficulty of nill. Oh, it glitches too, like this shot here.

I managed to jump over the fence and got stuck. 

At this point theres only one thing left to do with this wasted time and energy...

Sux ass indeed.

Rating: F-

Difficulty: 0/10

Completion Time: 10 minutes.

#4 3D World Runner

So...close! Not...

Title: 3D World Runner

Year:1989

Developer: Square

Publisher:Acclaim

Genre: Action

Everybody knows who Square-soft-enix is now a days, but back in the days before Final Fantasy, Square released their first US title, 3D World Runner. At a time when 2D side scrollers ruled the NES, Square decided to break away from the norm, creating the first 3D game for the NES. By pressing Select, it would enable its 3D mode, and though I haven't gotten the chance to give it a try, but it's still impressive that Square's programmers could enable it on the NES.

When you first start playing, first thing you notice is the forward scrolling setup, your character, Jack, pops up from in front of the bottom info display, your first clue that this game is something pretty out there. The checkerboard world gives an awesome perception of depth. Could you imagine popping this cart into your NES back in the late 80's to be greeted by such an awesome game. Hell, even I'm impressed. The enemy's pop into view, growing larger as they get closer to you. Running left and right does give the impression of depth by the way all the enemies and obstacles move around on the screen.

There are various power ups ranging from rockets, potions that allow you to take more than one hit of damage, and temporary invincibility. Mushrooms are instant death items, and somehow I think Square was poking fun of Mario a little bit.

The bosses in the game are basically all the same, with small differences in their looks, movement patterns, and defensive strength. The boss battles are also where the games changes a bit. Instead of running around, you're flying around on the screen to shoot at the boss. It can be a bit tricky to judge the distance of the boss to the screen simply because it is technically a 2D game pretending to have depth, but the bosses aren't all that tough. More likely, you'll run out of time on some of the tougher bosses.

The games difficulty goes from "Ok I got this" to "Are you fucking kidding me" at times, especially once they throw in things like pillar hopping. Now see, this is where this whole psuedo-3D thing starts falling apart. The game has you jump on top of pillars. 2D sprite pillars. You'll either slam into them George of the Jungle style, or fly right over them. It's almost hit or miss whether you'll land on them or not. It gets even worse in the last world, that decides you have to jump on top of the red cacti instead of pillars.

I should also mention the catchy music. While it isn't anything incredible, and I doubt it really shows off what the NES is capable of, it's catchy, and I found out it was also done by Nobuo Uematsu, who would later create some pretty awesome music for Square in the Final Fantasy games for years to come.

I read that a lot of people see 3D World Runner as a rip off of Space Harrier, and I can understand why that would be. I read an article that said that Square wanted to make the game to show off their programmers ability (for making the games 3D red/blue system) and that they admitted to liking Space Harrier as well. So even though it's similar, I think 3D World Runner may be more of a homage to Space Harrier, since 3D World Runner does have its own uniqueness as a platforming game.

Yeah, I cut out the bit showing how to enable hard mode, but I like this ending more.

Rating: B+

Difficulty: 6/10

Completion Time: 3-4 hours

#3 1943

The weapon upgrades are pretty awesome

Title: 1943

Year: 1988

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre: Shoot em up

Like I said last time. Im bad at shmups but I love them. 1943  is Capcoms sequel to 1942, and as far as i care, improves the game in every way.Though it is fair to say that 1942 wasnt developed by Capcom, but luckily this time around they ported the game to the Nintendo themselves.

The game opening tells of the battle being fought between you allies and the enemy. The enemy bombed your fleet, and now you must go out to destroy the enemys main ship, the Totaku. Its a nice addition I think, by actually putting the story directly into the game, and having named bosses this time.

The first thing you notice when you take off, is man this game looks awesome! The sprites are nicely detailed, and all the planes animations are pretty smooth. Your plane banks left and right when you move around, rockets spin, enemies are flying in from every direction. Its also added in  my favorite feature, multiple weapon upgrades. Youve got your standard machine gun, a 4 shot spread machine gun, what i think is some sort of spread shot flak cannon, and a heavy machine gun. Im pretty sure each weapon upgrade  has two levels to them. for instance, my main weapon choice was the flak gun. It fires a spread shot that looks like bubbles, is very short ranged, not very strong, but has the ability of defending against all bullets. Its second level has a farther range and kicks on your 2 shot machine gun.

The game really differs from the first in a lot of ways too. Gone is the one hit kill and 3 lives. Instead you have a constantly depleating energy, letting you take damage until it hits zero, and your special weapons have a time limit. There are secret items to refill them, as well as a hidden upgrade item. Finding the upgrade lets you add an additional point to either your offense, defence, energy level, special weapon time limit, and special weapon (power i assume?)

What I really liked in this game was the audio as a whole. The music was really nice and had that capcom feel (for some reason it reminded me of Mega Man) the music changes when you get below 20 energy points, and while you tend fo hear it a bit too often, it gives you a real feel of imminent death. The explosions and firing sfx are way better than before (forgot to mention too, but no morr 3 shot limit!) 

The game goes through 16 stages of sea and air battles,  the sea battles are the toughest. At any point you might have a dozen or more guns pointed at you from every direction, and this time, they do fire up the screen, so no more trying to run past the planes to avoid getting shot at. The bosses range from massive gunner planes, to battle ships and aircraft carriers. They arent exactly hard, but i wont lie and say its a cake walk. I died plenty of times trying to take down some of the later battle ships.

Yes! We win...or do we?

Yep, thats right, the first 16 are just a trap, 8 more stages left!

After stage 16 you find out that it was just a trap. The game starts back at level 1 (stage 17) there are more enemys this time i think, and the next 6 stages are the same as the first 6. Stage 23 has you go into a huge air battle, where you have to fight off the Ayako 1, 2 and 3 in succession. By now you should have plenty of practice blasting these big guys out of the air. After, stage 24 starts, but doesnt say anything in the begining like the first. This stage is all against the ships, fighting against every ship boss in thr game. This level is tough, and Capcom gives out lots of power ups and the like to get you through the level. By the time you face off against the Totaku, youll pretty much be out of special weapons amd energy, this level was awesome, but so tough for me. 

The end is a little cheesy, but its nice having an end to the game.

This was a long game but man was it fun. Every time I died i started right back up, over and over to the very end. I really hope all these NES shmups make me better at them. I know my review/overview of these games are long, but Im not a writer at all. So apologies for my long winded posts. Theyll make more sense as i gain experience.

Rating: B

Difficulty: 5/10

Completion Time: 3-4hours