Quest to Beat Every NES Game: #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.