Bad Dudes

Year: 1989
Developer: Data East

Let me begin by stating the obvious: there is no better premise for a video game, anywhere, ever, than Bad Dudes. I first played it 20 years ago, and it immediately stuck with me, forever. I'll be 92 and senile, and all I'll be able to say to my kid before I pass on will be,

"The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?"

You know? Oh, your ship crashlanded on a ring world while fighting against the Covenant? Yawn. You have part of the TriForce, and bla bla bla shut up. Your princess is in another castle, yeah, well, best of luck with that. Because the president has been kidnapped by ninjas, and it's on, y'all.

First, you decide whether to play as Blade or Striker, and the only difference is that Blade is gay. They don't make a big deal out of this, he's still a bad dude, but he's gay. I don't judge him, I'm just reporting the facts.

Then, you fight the shit out of ninjas, all day. There are blue ninjas, who are pussies, and grey ninjas, who if you know about japanese history you know are famous for throwing shit at you. Then, there are the red enemies, who contain soda that cures you, or nunchucks. There's a big fat boss on the first level, then the second level is all on a moving truck, and you fight a guy who's actually many ninjas, which is awesome. I got through the first two levels, and it felt pretty good -- jumping and punching work like you think they should, and the animations are varied enough that it's not stupid.

So, I guess the question is, what more can you reasonably ask for? It's not amazing, but you're fighting ninjas and it's sort of fun. If there were a mathematical way to take the average of all 750 NES games, it would probably look a lot like Bad Dudes, and that wouldn't be a terrible thing. If I have a criticism of Bad Dudes, it's that there's really no way that the game could possibly live up to its premise. It's just too good. If I had a tattoo, it would say, "Ninjas have kidnapped the president." And I would tell people it was there to remind me of what kind of Dude I should try to be.

Rating: 8/10 I am not a Bad enough Dude to rescue the president, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a ninja for?
Advice: Punch like crazy, at all times, everywhere, in all directions. I mean, why not?
Best Moment: As mentioned above, Bad Dude peaks in the first 10 seconds.

Back to the Future and Back to the Future II and III

Year: 1985, 1990
Developer: LJN

I'm going to review both of these at once because I'm kind of getting behind in my blogging, and what the hell do you care, anyway? It's not like you're going to go on eBay, hunt down Back the Future and Back to the Future 2 & 3, buy them, play them, and then want to talk about them, anyway. What kind of idiot would get involved in something like that?

So, Back to the Future is the better game. It's essentially a PaperBoy clone, right down to the isometric map showing your destination, but that's largely a good thing. The times when it stops being PaperBoy are the times that it starts sucking. Basically, you're running all around Hill Valley, throwing bowling balls at hula dancers and being chased by bees. Describing it now, I guess this part is sort of a pre-emptive ripoff of Toejam and Earl, but less racist. Although if stupid is a race, this game is like affirmative action for it. Whatever.

You run around, and you pick up clocks, though the clocks don't actually add time. They keep your picture of your family from fading out, but that's not the time limit. I mean, it's one of them, but there's another, and the clocks don't help with that one. I don't know. I guess one of the clocks is for Power of Love and the other is for Back in Time or something. Neither of those songs is in the game. I just thought you might enjoy being reminded of Huey Lewis. Gotta git BACK in ti-i-ime! Yeah!

So once you get through 4 levels of PaperBoy, you get to play this game where you throw cake that's really milkshakes at guys who run toward you, and then you lose. The end.

Back to the Future 2 & 3 is one game, and it both sucks. Laura liked this one better. I don't know why. It's a sort of platformer, with the added fun of you have to keep a map and this bird keeps kicking your ass. And it has the DeLorean in it. It drops you off so the bird can kick your ass again -- in the future!!!! Also, there's sort of a Dig Dug thing going on in it that made us insane with rage a few times.

I really couldn't get very far on BttF 2&3, which might be why i hate it, but I don't think so. I mean, I was able to kill stuff, and run around for a while, and i eventually figured out Dig Dug, but then there's this anagram game, and no, I'm totally not shitting you. You have to match the prizes you win playing Dig Dug with mixed up words in these other rooms located at the bottom of Mario pipes, and it's impossible and who cares?

I guess the lesson here is that, starting with E.T. and running right up through Bees: the Game, which I bet exists, if it's about a movie, you shouldn't play it. If you have to, stick to BttF 1, or just get PaperBoy, because throwing papers at that insane old woman who comes after you is more gratifying than throwing bowling balls at hula girls and bees. The end.

Rating: I don't know, 4/10? Not awful, but I'll never play them again.
Advice: Instead of helping your dad meet your mom, press AABBAAstart to turn him gay.
Best Moment: In the manual, it actually says, "Of course, when Biff and his crew grab him or the bees start to attack, you will find yourself losing precious seconds." I read that 100 times, out loud. Laura took the manual from me to make me stop. But I found it later, while we were playing Bad Dudes, and read it to her some more.

Back to the Future

Remember that part in the Back to the Future movie when Marty's running around collecting clocks while being chased by bees? Or the one where he throws milkshakes at the bullies coming into the soda fountain where he works?

Yeah, me neither. But apparently that's the best they could come up with for the game version. Despite the absurdity, there's components about it that seem like they could be fun - you're trying to beat the clock through the hula hoopers, old ladies, park benches, and, yes, bees, with the help of a bowling ball and skateboard, in order to get to some mini-games scattered throughout. But in practice, it's boring and easy. I got worse at it the longer I played as it just started to irritate me.

Also, it also has the worst song in history, which makes your ears bleed with sheet monotony after about a minute.

I can hardly wait for Back to the Future 2 and 3. Luckily I don't have to wait long.

Enemy design: 8 - pretty fun, actually
Gameplay: 5
Bees: 5

Athena

Athena made me want to play Amagon.

I'm not sure why, exactly. It was perfectly credible - there's decent weapons, and enemies, and there was a whole armor thing going on, which is interesting. And I appreciated getting to be a kick-ass woman for a nice change.

It was just boring. Sometimes a game comes together and is really fun, and sometimes it doesn't, and only the Nintendo gods know why.

Being a awesome warrior woman: 9
Overall fun: 5

Athena

Developer: SNK
Year: 1986

That Athena would be immediately after Amagon alphabetically is just one of those little serendipitous things. The two games are a lot alike, except that Athena stinks and Amagon is awesome, to the point that when we were finally fed up with Athena, Laura immediately wanted to play Amagon again.

So, there are some differences:

• Athena fights pigs and horse-headed guys with a club and also swords.
• Athena has bricks to break, a la SMB.
• There's a life meter.
• When you die, you go all the way back to the beginning of the level every single time.
• The game looks like shit.
• The music stinks.
• You're an anime woman with no discernable powers instead of an awesome stranded marine who can turn into Megagon.

Athena is wholly unremarkable. The controls stink -- there's a double-jump, sort of, though it's impossible to activate consistently, and there are numerous cases where you get trapped by an enemy and can't get out because they keep shooting you back when you run -- so much for the life meter. We got to the first boss, but it kicked our asses repeatedly because the framerate dropped to like 6 when it started shooting. You wind up not so much fighting the enemy as the game itself, which seeks to outsmart you by not working. Whatever.

Interesting note: there are these big flowers the grow and bite you which look exactly like the deku in Zelda. They also have their own music when they grow that plays over the actual score. It's sort of trippy.

So, there you have it. Athena made me want to go back and bump my score for Amagon up to an 8, but in the end, I think I'll just give Athena a 4 instead.

Rating: 4/10 Not horrible, but I'll never play it again.
Advice: The red skull shield removes all of your armour. Found that out the hard way.
Best Moment: Hearing the opening music from Amagon.

Amagon

Developer: Aicom
Released: 1989

Amagon is a great platformer, and not much more. You're a marine, named Amagon, which is not a misspelling, and your plane crashes on an island. From the site of the crash, you can see a boat at the other end of the island, so you grab your machine gun and head out.

Also, you can transform into Megagon, and he can punch the shit out of anything.

That's more or less it. The visual style is really fun, and the controls are pretty good. Amagon is a really unforgiving game, and you find yourself cursing at it alot, but then you play it again, which kind of means it's a good example of what it is. The Megagon aspect adds a little variety, and the enemies have a nice balance of predictability and difficulty. It's a pretty technical little game, and we played it for almost an hour, even though we weren't really getting anywhere.

I played Amagon once, when I was young, and I remember it being at my house, which is strange since I didn't have an NES. Whatever, I went into this wanting to like Amagon, and I did, so there you go. It's not an amazingly special game, but it looks good, it's addictive, and by those two measures, there are way, way worse games out there, several of which come before Amagon in the alphabet.

Rating: 8/10 A solid, fun platformer.
Advice: A megagon is a 1,000,000 sided figure. That's not advice. It's just interesting.
Best Moment: The millionth time you restart Amagon after falling in a hole.

Amagon

Okay, I sucked at this game. Apparently those who spent most of their youth playing Nintendo games are better at it than I. Or at least are able to consistently remember which button jumps and which button shoots. But it was hard in a legitimate and really fun way – when I, say, fell in a hole, generally I deserved to fall in a hole. And I proceeded to get obsessed with it, and play it over and over and over again in an attempt to beat level 1 (did I mention I sucked?).

It’s a side-scrolling Mario playing type of game, with lots of jumping and shooting. The graphics are really cartooning and fun, and make you realize how crappy the graphics are in a lot of these other games. The key to the game, though, which took us a while to figure out, is the Megagon (it even sounds good: Tremble before me, for I am the MEGAGON). This makes you big, but most importantly, it allows you to take up to seven hits (or as many hits as you have thousands of points) before dying, instead of just one. Also, you then punch rather than shoot, and there’s something to be said about the satisfaction of punching a snake or a flock of birds.

Overall fun: 9
Obsession factor: 9
Ability for the game designers to spell “Amazon” correctly: 2

Air Wolf

This was a bad, bad game. There appeared to be a lot going on, but nothing really seemed to matter. Fly to the prisoners, mashing both A and B continuously. Land the helicopter, using a different, incredibly twitchy and un-fun system. Wait for the busty female prisoners to run on board, and then fly out. Because, you know, only a macho Air Wolf like, er, me, can manage to fly the helicopter in circles to rescue the bimbos that have for some reason gotten themselves taken prisoner en mass.

If you were able to land the helicopter, this was a tedious game, and it didn’t get hard or remotely interesting until about 25 minutes into the game. If you, like me, were unable to master the ridiculous helicopter landing mini-game, it was a frustrating and stupid game.

Overall fun: 2
Bimbo factor: 7

Airwolf

Developer: Acclaim
Year: 1988

I guess the question is, "How could a game about Airwolf not be totally awesome?" Well, follow me, and learn.

One of the themes that's starting to qualify as 'recurring' in this whole effort is that NES games fail when they try to be too much. The AD&D game that we played, it was this huge complicated engine that didn't do anything. In the end, it's simply not that powerful a piece of hardware, and if you try to cram too much into a game, and don't do it well, you get this horrible bloat thing that happens.

Airwolf is another example of this phenomenon. You've got altitude, damage indicators, velocity, a fuel gauge, and a really complicated schematic map. This leaves maybe half of the available screen for the view of what's actually going on outside of your helicopter -- which would seem like a real design flaw except for how crappy the rendering is out there. As to controls, A is gun and B is missile, but this means that the throttle is controlled by (get this) start and select. The whole thing is unwieldy and ugly, and in the end, you don't get much for all the complexity.

There's planes going away from you, which behave exactly like planes coming toward you, and there are missiles, which look like used kleenex. The way you fight is by mashing A and B, simultaneously, all the time. Then you fly to a little person symbol on your crappy map, and all of a sudden you're playing Lunar Lander and you crash.

Until you figure out how to land, and then you zoom through the first 8 levels without dying at all. It was sort of funny -- we played 20 times, got nowhere, and then on the 21st, i was invincible. If that's not an indication of poor game design, I don't know what is.

So, Airwolf was ugly and bloated and complex, like Jenneane Garofalo, but unlike Jennine Garafalo, it's not interesting even in a 'wow, what's going on here?' kind of way. Like Janine Garafalo, Airwolf isn't fun, or funny, and it's also got a really unrewarding complexity. And in the end, like Janeannne Garafolo, I hope never to see Airwolf for the NES on my television again.

Rating: 3/10 I preferred Afterburner.
Advice: You think you can, but you really can't mash those buttons hard enough.
Best Moment: Realizing that, instead of being terrible at it, I was the best Airwolf in the world.

Afterburner

Afterburner is a really boring game. Here’s everything there is to know about it:

• Try to shoot the planes
• You can shoot missiles by locking on and hitting B
• Use your missiles for far planes, guns for near ones
• You might reasonably worry about running out of missiles, but don’t: you have tons
• If the enemy planes shoot a missile at you, wiggle around a lot
• If you wiggle enough, you can roll to fly upside down
• If you successfully wiggle a lot, you’ll move on to the next level, which are differentiated by different color bands. You can move from blue color bands (water?) to green (forest?) to black (nighttime?)

Also, it’s boring to play, but it’s nauseating to watch. Literally.

C’mon, at least the other ones have been interesting to make fun of….

Gameplay: 3
Creativity: 0

Afterburner

Developer: Sega
Year: 1988

Greetings, Laura, and welcome to the wide, wide, wide world of lackluster arcade ports!

When people talk about games from the 2nd era of console gaming 'not standing up', this is what they're talking about. Honestly, the game's not that bad, but if you can think of a single reason to play it for more than 10 minutes, I'd love to hear it. It's just not meant to be played for even as long as we've been playing these games, and that's a gaming phenomenon that doesn't exist any more -- mostly for the best.

All of this said, here's the breakdown on Afterburner:

• There's only 1 kind of enemy, unless you count the missile that tries to catch you from behind in the third stage.
• The stages are identical, except for the color of the non-descript ground passing below you -- check out the two screen
• You can roll your plane 360 degrees, though this mostly hurts your efforts to shoot anything.
• The song stinks -- and this is something that can really rescue a mediocre game.
• The graphics are lousy -- it's often difficult to tell oncoming missiles from other important things.
• Re-fueling is cool, though you don't actually do anything. There's a big mothership with a claw.

I wish i didn't feel this way about Afterburner, because I liked it as a kid, but I do: it just doesn't hold up.

And a large part of this is because it's a bad port, but another large part is because it's a port of an arcade game -- a very successful one, actually, by Yu Suzuki from Sega's AM2 development group. I think that arcade games in general -- with the possible exception of fighters -- probably won't stand up in your house anymore. It's sort of sad, but if you don't believe me, go play Afterburner. You won't hate it. You just won't want to play it for very long.

Rating: 5/10 Meh.
Advice: You can't crash into the ground, but feel free to try.
Best Moment: The claw, obviously. And realizing that you actually start with 150 missiles, so fire away.

The Adventures of Bayou Billy

There are a number of things I don’t understand about Bayou Billy. First off, why does everyone in the Bayou know kung-fu? If it’s so darn handy to have a gun or a knife, why didn’t I bring one along, rather than hoping some dude drops one along the way? And am I really supposed to be worried about a guy named GORDON?

But none of that prevents Bayou Billy from being really fun. It’s action is great, just the right combination for me of skill and button mashing – there are things to know, but not so much that you have a hard time remembering what button does what. It was a challenge but not brutally hard - and didn't require years of Nintendo practice to be competent. Graphics are a fun, low res tour through the bayou – mangrove trees, swamps, French Quarter, etc.

Also, it made Henry scream “Holy shit, it has a light gun component!” So apparently that’s exciting about it.

Game play: 8
Fidelity to real bayou life: 4 (there’s really crocodiles there, right? And mangroves?)

The Adventures of Bayou Billy

Developer: Konami
Year: 1989

So, this guy named Gordon steals your girlfriend Annabelle, and then you have to chase him through a swamp and fight a bunch of guys with a stick and also there's a shooting level and some driving.

In short, tAoBB is everything that's great about the NES.

From start to finish, this game is excellent. It's got your Bad Dudes punching and kicking, there's some weapons you can pick up, ugly guys throw rocks at you, and there's alligators that barf turkeys that replenish your health. Then, there's the shooting at guys in the jungle part, using the Zapper, complete with guy who throws dynamite you have to shoot before it hits you. And the driving, well, it sucks, but whatever.

The music's great -- sort of a New Orleans / Nintendo version of 'Kung Fu Fighting'. And there are training levels for everything, so you can just pick up and play whatever piece of the game you feel like. Infinite continues give you that sense of, "Well, if i don't finish this, it's because I lack commitment". And like I said, the bad guy's name is Gordon, and he stole your girlfriend. What -- are you not interested in seeing if you can get her back?

So overall, tAoBB is top quality. It's a nice balance of difficulty and reward, it plays well, and it's completely ridiculous. Highly recommended.

Rating: 9/10 Only the crappy driving level keeps this from a 10/10.
Advice: The crocodiles look tough, but if you just jump in and start bashing them with a stick, they're no problem. Just like real life.
Best Moment: After beating the gun practice level, I was told that I had nothing to fear from Gordon. I found this very reassuring.