Commando

Publisher: Capcom
Released: 1986

I sometimes forget how much fun it is to run up while mashing A. I mean, from a certain point of view, it's the most basic form of interaction with video games. Commando really does this nicely, and returning to it after probably 3 or 4 years, I'm really happy with it.

So, what's there to say? You've played Commando, for sure, I mean, if you've played anything -- it's probably in the top 10 or 15 most popular NES games in my made up mental inventory of whose house I saw it at as a teenager. You're this guy, you get dropped off by a helicopter, and you need, very badly, to get up. Or north. Or wherever. The point is, run and shoot, and don't stop until your thumb falls off.

Commando is a lot of fun. It's simple, it's manic, it's got a little bit of variety in environment and the fact that there's a grenade, and the music is pretty good. And when you beat a stage, they show you smoking, so you can tell you're cool. There are these prisoners you free by touching them, and there are hidden basements that you can only find if you grenade them. It's got a lot going on for a really simple, really early NES game.

Tech wise, there are 3 things to know about Commando. First off, and god bless the developers for this, there are, most of the time, more guys on the screen than your NES can draw. So you get a lot of ghosts and flickering guys who are hard to see. That's what we in the business call accidental fun. Second, everything moves independent of the scenery -- that is, if you throw a grenade, and you want it to land ahead of where it should, you running forward will cause the ground to scroll underneath it. Neat trick. And third, you get stuck on rocks and stuff a lot. This annoyed Laura, but from where I sit, it's that accidental fun again.

Commando is really good. It's fun, it's classic, and it's quirky, which is what you look for. Your thumb is going to hurt like you wouldn't believe. Mine was actually sore two days later. It's that good, and that terrible.

Rating: 8/10
Advice: Shoot. And maybe take some aspirin before you start.
Best Moment: Freeing the prisoners. The first thing they do with their freedom? Run to the right holding a sign reading "$1000" over their heads. That's what I'd do, too.

Clu Clu Land

Developer: Nintendo
Year: 1985

Clu Clu Land is another one of those really early 1st party NES titles that usually turn out to lack depth but be completely addictive. It's impressive how many of those there turn out to be, how much Nintendo got right immediately out of the gate.

If you played Chu Chu Rocket on the Dreamcast (and I assume you did), you'll find that this game feels sort of similar. In Clu Clu Land, you literally bounce around a screen and change direction by sticking your arm out and grabbing a post, which are arranged in a grid around the board. The object is to move over certain parts of the screen that draw a picture, though you don't know before-hand what that picture is going to be.

It's manic, and it's simple, and there's co-op, and it's fun and addictive. What more do you want?

Rating: 7/10 Not a lot of depth, but that's OK.
Advice: Get used to the fact that if you're going down, and you want to go up, you need to press right or left.
Trivia: When I was dating Daisy Klingman, we all used to annoy her by asking her if she'd ever seen the movie Cru Cru. This game made me think of that. Wow. That was annoying.

The cool thing to do

The cool thing to do would be to ignore the 4 months in between posts here, but that's not really how i roll. Truth be told, you can chalk it up to my career change -- my first interview at LL Bean was 3 days after that last post, and things really snowballed from there.

Anyway, we really enjoy doing this, and we're starting back up, effective about four days ago. Now, where were we....

Castelian

Year: 1987
Developer: Triffix

Castelian is a puzzle game, and it's a pretty clever one. Basically, you're this orange or blue poop with legs, and you have to walk around this tower, making your way up by way of elevators and dodging enemies, until you reach the top. Along the way, you can shoot, you can jump, and you can go in and out of doors that take you 1/2 way around the tower. It's a nice idea.

It even looks pretty good. As you walk, rather than moving around the screen, the tower is actually drawn as rotating behind you as your poop man stays more or less stationary. The result is a pretty cool 'world revolving around my point of view' feeling that works pretty well.

Unfortunately, Castelian controls like crap. I mean, honestly, crap. I'm pretty forgiving, but the 90th time i fell into a hole or got hit by an enemy i was sure was out of range, I started to get really pissed. I was cursing a lot, and Laura was getting uncomfortable. Everything was bullshit. I felt a lot like Mike did that time in 8th grade that he threw his controller and spit on his TV while we were playing Castlevania 2. Eventually, I stormed out of the room.

So, there you go: interesting premise, simple layout, cool graphics, all ruined by shite control. Oh, and there was a time limit. And it was short. We played probably 40 times each, and neither one of us could finish the first level, on novice, within the time limit. I mean, really -- that's some bullshit. And it's a shame, because I think that if you tightened up the controls and added 50 % to the time limit, this might have been a really great game.

But they didn't, so it's not.

Rating 4/10 There's something here, but it mostly just pissed me off.
Best Moment The 30th time that the level started, and we just took 3 steps to the right and died. Exxxxxxcellent.
Advice Try the PC version? Honestly, there's a good version of this game. This just isn't it.

Captain Skyhawk

Year: 1990
Developer: Rare

Captain Skyhawk is our second really pleasant surprise in a row. It's your basic space shooter, except with a bunch of really cool twists.

First of all, Rare has succeeded in simulating a 3-d environment really well -- it feels like you're moving in both the x and the y as you zoom forward. Second, there are a couple of interesting mini-games thrown in -- one that's essentially an airplane shooter from behind, and another that's about docking with a space station that's really slow, twitchy, and nerve-wracking. And on top of it all, there's some real variety in the graphical presentation that makes the whole thing feel really nice.

On the down-side, as with Cabal, it took us a few plays to figure out what the hell was going on, and even when we did, the main stage was super twitchy -- we slammed into a lot of walls. Also, the boss fights were sort of anti-climactic, given the difficulty of getting to them.

Overall, though, once we got this down, we passed the controller back and forth for well past the 20 minutes we'd planned on playing. Captain Skyhawk has some real personality, and there are a bunch of different things to like about it. This is still pretty early for Rare -- I know that RC ProAm was before this, but we're still 3 or 4 years from when they hit their stride. But it's a really good game, and probably missed being really famous only as a result of the NES being near the end of its life.

Rating: 9/10 Lots and lots of fun, period.
Advice: Keep moving. This is how games used to be, and you forget that, and you shouldn't. Keep fucking moving.
Best Moment: Docking. Finally. On my 15th try.

Cabal

Year: 1990
Developer: Fabtek

Now, this is interesting. Cabal is a genuine 3rd person shooter, with a pretty cool targeting system -- not a mechanic that did really well on the NES, and it actually does really well here. You run with the cross, but when you hold down b, you stop and you're moving a crosshair that directs your shooting. The net result is that you have to make a choice about whether you're going to shoot or run, and the balance is pretty nice, brings some strategy to an otherwise straightforward idea.

Controls were nice, graphics were OK -- nothing special, but given the amount of action on the screen at once (lots) you don't really notice that much. There's a nice mechanic in that you start the level with several walls to hide behind, but these gradually get destroyed, and you have to start running and gunning alternately to stay alive.

I guess the only complaint that I really have, aside from the difficulty, which is more a whine than an actual complaint, is that your progress is measured in a body count. This is way less cool than having an actual objective, and also sort of gross. Other than this, though Cabal was sort of a pleasant surprise -- it took about 10 minutes to figure out, but once we got the run-shoot mechanic, we really liked it.

Rating: 8/10 A really interesting take on the weave back and forth and shoot genre.
Advice: Don't waste your time with grenades. Shoot, shoot, shoot.
Best Moment: The creepy hoe-down walk you do when you clear a level. Sort of, sort of gross.