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.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Year: 1990
Developer: Sony Imagesoft

Should be called Shit Stoker's Shitula. Oh, or maybe Dr. Entirely Unremarkable's Jumping Chore with Digital Screech Feature.

Rating: Shit/Shit
Advice: Play a game that's good, or bad. This one is shit.
Best Moment: Aaaaand, we're moving on.

Boy and His Blob

Year: 1989
Developer: Activision

This one, strictly speaking, is out of alphabetical order: it's really called 'David Crane's A Boy and His Blob'. David Crane, apparently, coded Pitfall, and is a dork. Or was a dork. Wait here, I'll go Wikipedia him.

No, he's still a dork. I just emailed his company, which apparently makes web games for ESPN, so, props for just staying in the business for like 30 years. I'll let you know what I hear.

Anyway, DCABaHB is part platformer, part adventure game. You're this boy, and you have this blob. I know this, because this is one of the games for which I have the instructions. Anyway, your blob, which is from Blobolonia, turns into different things when you give him different flavored jellybeans. Like, if you feed him lemon, he turns into a ladder. Not really, but that's the idea. I forget how you make a ladder.

The controls are a little clunky, for sure -- it's a game that doesn't do adventure or platformer perfectly, though the mix of the two is nice. It's also not particularly easy on the eyes, though the animation of the blob has some personality. And the instruction manual features a section called, "More About the Amazing Jellybean", and I'm not going to read it until I'm older and life has lost all of its spark and I need something new just to make it worthwhile to get out of bed. I bet it's going to be awesome.

Rating: 6/10 Like I said, controls are meh, but it's a good idea.
Advice: The blob hates ketchup jellybeans. And I think his name is actually Blob.
Best Moment: Oh, I don't know.