100+ games and super mario still reigns

i had to set aside my resolution to tone down on the number of sequels i’ve been playing temporarily in order to commemorate the 100th game i’ve completed since i started keeping track of my renewed gameplaying obsession a few years ago. to mark the occasion i decided to play through probably the most iconic video game of all time, the original super mario bros. for the NES.

i’d squeezed in a quick playthrough a while back, but for this occasion i sat down and played through both “quests” without warping. i was also going to try to do it all without any continues and without using the extra lives cheat in 3-1, but in the end i had to use the continue cheat after all. although i have world 8 pretty much completely memorized, i haven’t played world 7 as much as the rest of the game; but i was pleasantly surprised to find that the game wasn’t going to just be a mindless nostalgia trip.

what’s there to say about the game that hasn’t already been said? the game has been rightfully universally praised, and it’s easily one of the top landmarks of video game history; it’s hard to imagine its influence will ever be underestimated. even after countless playthroughs there’s no doubt that this game absolutely holds up and is as much fun as ever. the characters, pacing, powerups, design, music, graphics, gameplay, everything is just fantastic, with each world offering up surprises. from our modern-day persective and hundreds of mario games later it’s easy to take all of its innovations and wacky creativity for granted, and it’s only when we stop to think about how crazy the whole setup is (plumbers in the mushroom kingdom?) that we get a glimpse of how sad and dark a world without mario and company would be.

even after all this time i’m still noticing little details in the game. for example, a while back the good folk at gonintendo linked to a post that pointed out that the bushes are just the clouds colored green, and this playthrough i noticed that the flagpoles are different colors depending on the stage. and i haven’t even gotten into all the dumb stuff that people have found out about the game since it was released that have added to the game’s appeal, like the infamous minus world glitch, the jumping over the flagpole glitch, and the dancing on the ivy trick. (and i’m sure i’m not the only one who still makes the mario face out of the bricks in that one bonus room.)

[as a side note, i happened to be reading an old issue of nintendo power (feb 2006, vol. 200) and in it kazuaki morita, one of the programmers of the game, mentions that when they first heard about the infinite lives cheat he and miyamoto "thought the call was a hoax", but that when they tested it out he had "a real scare". he concludes by saying, "Fortunately, very fortunately, the 'unlimited Mario' cheat had a ton of PR value as word spread, because I sweated bullets over what might happen!" haha. awesome.]

although i’m keeping this post short, there’s nothing small about my love for this game. in looking over the many, many games i’ve played over the years, somehow the original super mario bros. still tops my list of all-time favorites, even after all these years. the world is forever indebted to the genius that is mario creator shigeru miyamoto and all the good folk at nintendo who worked on SMB and continue to give us great gaming experiences even now, a quarter of a century later. it’s because of them that i am and will always be a nintendo fanboy. here’s to another quarter of a century (and more) of great nintendo games!

whoo hoo! mario (and ‘uigi’s) super links!
- nice nostalgic review of the game at videogamecritic.net
- themushroomkingdom.net has a great site on the game including the text of the instruction manual and tons of useless factoids, like the number of goombas in the game (142).

milon’s castle’s secrets uncovered

i realized that i’ve been playing way more sequels this year than ever before, so i decided to step back and dig into the pile of games i’ve been meaning to play (and finish). the first one i laid my hands on was milon’s secret castle by hudson soft for the NES. MSC was one of those games i had owned and played as a kid, but i had never been able to finish it. it had always intrigued me, and at long last i have fulfilled my childhood dream of beating the game. from the vantage point of the current internet age, i was at a huge disadvantage in terms of beating the game, because somehow i had lost the instruction book and was missing the crucial information that you can continue by holding down the left button when pressing start at the title screen. i’m amazed that i was able to get as far as i did back then with this huge handicap; never underestimate the tenacity of a kid whose mom won’t buy him as many games as all his friends’ parents.

looking through reviews online it seems the game is pretty much universally maligned. just starting the game i immediately recalled how incredibly frustrating the first room was. the game offers you no hints on how to progress, and i still don’t remember how i finally had the breakthrough that you have to destroy the two blocks in the bottom right corner of the room, then push the middle block, and then shoot a bubble in the empty space to reveal an essential door. this breakthrough is all the more frustrating since it’s only one of two times you push a block in the entire game. anyway, this random review i came across eloquently further illuminates the game’s gameplay:

My guess is that the presence of the word “Secret” in this game’s title is rooted in the fact that virtually every room here holds hordes of secret rooms and items. You aren’t expected to just fire your weapon at enemies (that quickly respawn), but at EVERYTHING. You’ll be breaking blocks like crazy. You’ll be firing into blank, empty air. You’ll be constantly flooding the screen with bubbles because any single location in any single room just might hide a doorway leading to something you need to clear the game.

a bit of an exaggeration, since the secrets aren’t in completely random locations, but it is true that to progress you’ll be making a habit of shooting bubbles everywhere possible. having gone through all the pain of learning how the game operates so many years ago, playing through the game this time around was mostly just enjoyable. imho, the rooms are well designed with a lot of variety in their layout; the castle, which serves as the game’s map, is fun to navigate; the music and graphics are both enjoyable; the main character is endearing; and the powerups, while not approaching the epic scale of nintendo’s franchises, are all pretty useful. there’s also a bonus level that’s fun. the biggest drawbacks are that the boss battles are pretty much all the same (although the same could be said about the original super mario bros.); the last boss is fairly lame, and the ending consists of a single still image (although, again, super mario bros. doesn’t offer anything better either); and on the third floor all of the three bosses you can choose to face are pretty much impossible to beat until you find a couple of remaining powerups. people also complain that milon doesn’t have an invincibility period when he gets hit, which means that the damage can rack up, but i didn’t have much of a problem with that.

all in all given the fact this was released in 1985, i ended up being pretty impressed with the game’s solid gameplay and nicely designed rooms. once past the initial frustrations i think many people would find a lot to enjoy, but i can see why so many people would never be able to get to that point. if the instruction book had included an explanation of the first stage the game probably would’ve gone over much better, but as it is this is a classic that will probably never get the attention it deserves. the japan-only sequel (available on the VC) is apparently a much more straightforward platformer that has gotten good reviews, and i’ll definitely be checking it out, as well as the game boy version of the original which has a password feature. i think the original game contains all the elements for a great revival, though; but it doesn’t seem like that’s likely to ever happen. too bad!

milon’s secret links:
- great fan site including info on other versions and the text of the instruction manual.
- great info at strategywiki.org, including images of the castle map, level maps, enemies, and bosses.
- this random page has images of all of the in-game “hints” which are amusing. i never did figure out what the heck “A WATERPOT IN ICY ROOM” means.
- entry at wikipedia
- nintendoage.com includes scans of the manual

mario (and luigi) karted again

i hadn’t really been that into super mario kart when i played it last year, but i found myself curious about its first sequel, mario kart 64. MK64 has the advantage of true 3-D graphics and as a result much more varied tracks, but it also offers up some great new items (triple green and red shells, the ghost item, the fake question block, and the dreaded blue shell). the biggest changes to the setup are that each cup consists of 4 tracks instead of 5, there are less laps, and you get unlimited retries. all those changes make the game much, much easier, something i found myself having mixed feelings about but in the end preferred.

because of the latter changes and also because the tracks were easier (it seemed like there were far fewer hairpin turns), in general i didn’t have much problem getting the golds all the way up to the 150cc mode using my man luigi (didn’t bother with mirror mode, though). like many sequels, MK64 feels like a leap forward, and i ended up enjoying it much more than SMK; in fact, it’s made me a convert to the series. the main complaints people continue to have about the series is that the AI opponents pull off superhuman feats and that the better items are given to those who are losing. in my playthrough of the solo mode i found the AI’s rubberbanding to be a bit annoying, but given that your computer opponents are usually relying on weaker weapons (e.g. banana peels) and pretty much never chuck a red shell at you i didn’t think it was too unfair. i also didn’t have much of a problem with the item distribution, and i actually really grew to like the fact that even if you make some mistakes you can still win a race thanks to some much-needed items when you’re lagging behind. racing games in general rely on perfection more than most, something i dislike in games in general, but the kart series helps alleviate those types of headaches. and even though the item distribution makes for a more casual experience, the game still requires more than blind luck to win each race. i can definitely see how the item randomness could be a big pain in a multiplayer game, though.

all in all, despite being a bit too easy this was a thoroughly enjoyable game, and despite some misgivings i decided to give it the benefit of the doubt since it’s just too much stupid fun and i officially inducted it into my “top games of all time” list. it doesn’t look like the series has evolved very much, but i’m looking forward to trying out the rest of the series (although it looks like the next entry, super circuit on the GBA is a bit of a step back).

kart links:
- a nice look at MK64 in the context of the series as a whole
- comparison of metacritic scores and sales of all the games in the series at wikipedia and a chart of the playable characters
- “The real Rainbow Round has been found!”: funny pic at gonintendo
- entry at wikipedia
- PDF of manual at replacementdocs.com
- random collection of cheats

majora unmasked

so the loooong game that was taking me forever to finish was the much-discussed the legend of zelda: majora’s mask. in a complete coincidence i finished the game after some marathon sessions shortly after the game was released this week to commemorate the 300th release on the virtual console.

due to the game’s release there’s been tons of discussion about it online these days. despite its reuse of much of the design of ocarina of time, the game is as much a black sheep of the zelda series as zelda II: the adventure of link was. the game is noted for being darker in tone than the rest of the series, with the disaster of the moon crashing into the earth always looming literally overhead. the central game mechanic, in which you replay the same three days over and over again, a la the classic movie groundhog day, is amazingly innovative, even almost 9 years later. the game hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as it deserves, perhaps partly because of its unusual mechanics, but also perhaps it was a bit ahead of its time. hopefully now it will reach a broader audience who can appreciate what a great game it is.

and what a great game it is! i’ve been enjoying my progression through the zelda series, but after i finished ocarina, zelda fatigue was threatening to set in. luckily this game provided a real breath of fresh air and in fact it’s joined my list of “favorite games of all time”. this isn’t to say it’s without its flaws, though. one of the main complaints people have about it is that the time limit sometimes makes you repeat extended sequences of actions, which can be frustrating to say the least. and even outside of the time limit there are some places where the game sets you up so that it’s highly likely that you’ll have to repeat a section because you didn’t complete it on the right day. in my case the problem with the repetitions was compounded by the fact that either my N64 or my expansion pak is buggy, because when i zipped through areas the way i usually do the game would freeze. once i got used to slowing down and letting the camera catch up with me i was usually fine, though, although there were still way too many occasions where i’d have to redo whole sections even beyond what a normal playthrough of the game would entail. extremely frustrating, but the game was definitely worth slogging through that issue and any other quibbles i might have with the game.

in addition to the completely absorbing and fresh central game mechanic, there’s also a more complex story than usual that unfolds well. it seems that the game’s designers made a conscious effort to make the characters come alive. in this interview from nintendo power tezuka, one of the supervisors of the game says:

There were a number of characters in Ocarina of Time that we wanted to describe more fully. We didn’t have the means to do it in Ocarina, but in Majora’s Mask we do because players have the opportunity to meet every character in the game and learn more about them.

in response to the question “Is there anything you weren’t able to accomplish in Ocarina of Time that you have included in Majora’s Mask?” miyamoto adds:

Yes. In fact, that is why we’ve decided to base the game on the three-day intervals. This allows gamers to see characters as they go through their daily routines in more detail. Depending on which time of day you visit a particular character, he or she will be doing different things.

one of the things i really appreciated about the game was how well the side quests are integrated into the game. a lot of the side quests involve the characters you’re constantly running into in the town, which serves as the home base. so while you’re preparing for the next part of the main quest, it’s almost impossible not to become curious about what’s going on with these other characters, and before you know it you’re deeply involved in trying to help them with their problems. also, because of the time mechanic there are many times where you’re forced to wait around for a particular time of day, so in those cases the side quests and the mini-games, like the shooting gallery, become ideal ways to pass the time (assuming that you don’t get sucked into them and lose track of time as i repeatedly did). in fact, because of the game’s design i ended up doing way more sidequests than i usually do. also, the sidequests where you have to find and collect useless tokens (in this game, as in ocarina, they’re golden skulltulas) are contained in two skulltula houses instead of scattered all over the game map, and i completed both of those as well.

well, not much else to say without getting into the details of the game and spoiling some of the surprises. but let it suffice to say that there hasn’t been a game that has sucked me in so completely in quite a while, as my significant other will attest. a flawed masterpiece, but one that i highly recommend every gamer should experience. (oh, and in case you were wondering, when you beat the game, the game automatically saves so that you keep anything you accomplished in the last 3-day time period you played.)

links unmasked!
- if you’re looking for additional basic info about the game here’s a good review at vc.nintendolife.com.
- there are tons of great zelda sites that have tons of info about the game. zeldadungeon.net is a good one and has tons of screenshots.
- the official site has a good bare-bones FAQ if you get stuck and want to minimize spoilers. if you’re looking for an in-depth walkthrough this one on gamefaqs is pretty good.
- text dump at zeldalegends.net
- video of some cool easter eggs on youtube. and here’s a cool reference to star fox in the game that someone noticed that may or may not have been intentional. also, zeldainformer.com has a pretty good succinct list of easter eggs.
- funny majora-related comic at brawl in the family
- just for fun, here’s a zelda 64 caramelldansen video featuring characters from ocarina and majora
- some majora wallpapers at zeldauniverse.net
- majora seems to inspire a fair amount of discussion and debate. zeldainformer.com has some interesting essays, including “The Tribe That Vanished from Legend” that speculates on the identity of the happy mask salesman, and “The Message of Majora’s Mask” that explores many aspects of the game that you may not have pondered very closely.
- this company first4figures.com was selling collectible figures of the skull kid and fierce deity link, but it looks like they’ve sold out (unsurprisingly).
- entry at wikipedia

adventures of kirby

kirby games aren’t my favorite, mostly b/c they’re so easy, but since playing brawl i’ve wanted to see meta knight’s first appearance, which was in kirby’s adventure for the NES. kirby’s adventure is the second game in the series and the first to feature kirby’s now character-defining ability to copy enemies’ abilities by swallowing them (who knew that such ruthlessly carnivorous behavior could be so darn cute?).

although the second in the series, this was my third kirby game, and the game held very few surprises, particularly since i’d already played the game immediately following, kirby’s dream land 2. kirby’s adventure often gets good reviews, even today (e.g. lucas m. thompson’s review of the VC release on IGN), and a lot of people seem to count it among their favorite games ever. but my reaction to it and dream land 2 were similar: in my mind both suffer from painfully easy levels without enough variety in enemies or geography to keep the scenery somewhat interesting to compensate at least partially for the complete lack of interesting gameplay.

i actually don’t have much more to say about this game, other than that i enjoyed kirby’s adventure more than dream land 2. the game as a whole feels bigger, and it includes additional powerups, more sub-boss and boss battles, and a colorful ambience provided by the NES that the gray-scale game boy lacked. it was also nice to see the original appearance of characters i was introduced to when i played the puyo puyo spin-off kirby’s avalanche. but it seems supremely pointless to me that the game’s “extra” mode is just beating the whole game at 100% with no saves.

nintendo fanboy i may be, but the kirby series is still ranking pretty low on my list of favorite nintendo series. but i played through the first part of the next game in the series kirby super star, which appears on the SNES and was recently remade for the DS. and even though super star is still as easy as ever, it looks like kirby has a lot of new moves and that it’ll be more interesting overall.

it was recently announced that the starfy series would finally be coming to the US, and although i’m definitely excited to have more games that were previously exclusive to japan, i’m leery of the starfy series being even more mindless than the kirby series. but of course i’ll be keeping my eye on it anyway, and i haven’t completely given up on kirby. i’ll try to keep an open mind as i find out how the rest of the series pans out.

kirby’s adventurin’ links:
- as usual kirby’s rainbow resort has tons of great info on their kirby’s adventure sub-site, including official artwork and loads of screenshots, most of the instruction manual, and the soundtrack.
- youtube video of (almost) every ability
- here’s a FAQ (or two) if you’re missing the last few secrets to get 100%.
- 1up has a nice history of kirby, recapping all the main games as well as all the spin-offs
- screenshots of the ending at vgmuseum.com
- entry at wikipedia

wii software stats: list fetishism at its finest

i have such a fetish for lists that it’s kind of ridiculous. i won’t go into a full confession here, but let it suffice to say that at the very least i maintain my personal list of games i’ve played and own with an almost religious fervour, not to mention the list of games i’m planning on getting.

so as you can imagine, for me the “wii software stats” feature on the wii section of MTV’s gaming blog has been like crack to a junkie. it first began as a one-off article for another site at the end of june, but has been a monthly feature since september (the links to the entries are here). the culprit behind all of it (i.e. my unknowing dealer) is stephen totilo, and he does a great job of not only compiling the numbers but also discussing the overall trends. it’s fascinating to me (and prob. to a lot of other video game geeks out there) to see how a game like brawl is still played months after its release, whereas single-player games like metroid prime get played, beaten, and then put aside. lately i’ve actually seen some of this in action, as i finally have a buddy to play brawl with and find myself not only putting in time replaying adventure mode and brawling one-on-one, but also getting back into it on my own and playing with characters i’d completely neglected (poor wario was sitting at the bottom of my # of brawls list, so i gave him some attention today haha. his final smash still sucks though).

there’s so much other fascinating stuff as well, like seeing the average amount of time people play a game, and comparing it to the average time it should take to finish the game (i.e. most people don’t finish games. no big surprise there, though). i’m really looking forward to seeing how the numbers for the VC and wiiware games shape up, and also games like wii fit and wii music. it’ll also be interesting to see how the holidays changes the numbers, as you have more people getting together to play games (myself included) and all the people getting new games.

… yes, i know i’m a geek. but i’m still jonesin’ for my next hit!

how to spot a video game deal a mile away

still slogging my way through this endless game (which i hope to be done with in at least two weeks). so i just thought i’d post about a site i find useful and end up wasting time on, videogamepricecharts.com. if there’s one thing i love almost as much as lists, it’s charts. haha. the numbers seem to be fairly accurate, so it’s a great way to find out if you’re getting a deal or not; although keep in mind that they’re tracking averages, so if you’re patient you should be able to get a better deal than the average price. what i find interesting (and this is my geekiness coming through, prepare yourself) is seeing how particular events are reflected in immediate changes in price. for example, the chart for fire emblem: path of radiance is interesting b/c you can see the huge spike in price from november to december 2007 right before brawl was released; the game, of course, showcased path of radiance’s central protagonist, ike. and when you look at the chart of clubhouse games for the DS you see how the price stayed pretty high as the game became more rare, but then dropped drastically when the game was rereleased recently. it boggles my mind that publishers don’t use tools like this to rerelease games that are clearly in demand, e.g. tetris DS.

something that could use some more study is how the release of a game on the virtual console affects the selling price of the actual game. from my random spot checks it doesn’t seem like it affects it much at all, which leads me to believe that the people who are buying these retro games are for the most part retro fans who want to buy the actual cartridge to play on their actual systems (i.e. geeky people like me). the original harvest moon, on the SNES, was released on the VC in february 2008 and its price continued to rise steadily afterwards, the same as it had been doing before. the price of castlevania: symphony of the night, available on both XBLA and PSN, has been dropping steadily, but it was doing so even before the rereleases (march and july 2007 respectively). in contrast, though, the price of zelda: ocarina of time dipped sharply a couple of months after its february 2007 VC release, which could be b/c of all the un-nostalgic people who were happy with their VC copy and sold their old N64 copies. clearly there are a lot of factors at work here, but it would be, dare i say it, fascinating to see a more in-depth study that tried to make sense of at least some of the many variables. i read somewhere that annually video game prices tend to be their lowest during the summer, but i’ve forgotten where i read that, so if anyone has that link handy feel free to email me. [update: the vg price charts man himself posted a message saying that november is actually the best time to buy used games. i also just found out that he's been running a whole series of articles on price trends on the site's blog. sweet! more time wastage!]

the creator of the videogamepricecharts.com put together an article for vintagecomputing.com that looks at how much of a deal VC games are overall, given that they’re all consistently priced per platform on the VC even though some have become much rarer than others in the non-virtual world. his conclusion?

“The original Nintendo is the only system where buying the cartridges would be cheaper than buying the virtual games because many games for the NES would cost less than a dollar. Every other system, especially the TurboGrafx-16, boasts higher average prices for the cartridges than the Wii’s VC downloads.”

ah, if only i weren’t such a retro gamer i’d buy way more of these VC releases instead of shelling out $40+ for used copies of games like super mario RPG (only $8 on the VC!). but there’s nothing like the smell of dusty old nintendo cartridges in the mornin’! mm hm!

galaga’ed

i’ve been playing the original NES version of the 80’s arcade classic galaga for a while now. there doesn’t seem to be much info specifically on the NES port, but there are some interesting differences. one trivial difference is that the game was subtitled “demons of death” on the cartridge for no apparent reason other than to titillate would-be purchasers i suppose. aficionados will also notice that the graphics take a minor hit compared to the arcade version, and there’s also a notable difference in gameplay in that your ship is only allowed two bullets onscreen at any one time. this change, no doubt due to limitations of the hardware, makes the game a bit harder and will cause those used to the arcade version to have to adjust their strategy, but to compensate there’s an additional feature where if you press the A button you’ll automatically fire two bullets in quick succession. this really saves your thumb, and i found myself switching back and forth between the two-bullet fire and the regular one-bullet fire, depending on the situation. one other minor change is that the stage and # of ships remaining info has been moved from the bottom of the screen to the right side. this also takes a bit of adjusting since it’s harder to see exactly where the right edge of the playing field is, but i found i got used to it after a while. all in all even for die-hard fans of the original version this is still a very good port of the classic game we all know and love.

as for galaga in general, call me a retro gamer but to me this game truly stands as a monument to practically perfect classic gaming. the controls, graphics, and music/sound are all great; the pacing at which the difficulty increases is spot on; and the gameplay is simple but beautifully clean and elegant. there’s also a constant variety within these parameters that keeps you coming back for more. the most obvious are the challenge stages interspersed throughout, of which there are eight total, and most of which take some mastering to achieve perfect scores (i.e. 40 out of 40 enemies defeated). but there are also other variations as well. there are several different enemy entrance patterns, and if you do well (i.e. defeat a lot of the enemies as they enter) the main part of the stage in which you face off against the enemies you didn’t defeat is significantly easier. then there’s the main part of the stage in which you dodge the swooping enemies and their bullets, with the added event where one enemy morphs into three special enemies that give a sizable bonus if you defeat all three. the most eye-catching feature is the ability to win back a captured ship to double your firepower, although i ended up not using it that often and i doubt most hard-core galaga players do.

galaga seems to be one of those games that everyone’s played but it seems it hasn’t been given enough love lately. if anyone’s hesitating about getting the NES port on the virtual console i can recommend it wholeheartedly, and i hope it renews your love for this classic as much as it did for me. my goal this time around was just to break 200,000 (which seems to be fairly modest, since i’ve seen scores well over a million and as high as 3 million, according to sources such as nintendo power v. 13). my next goal is to make it to level 31, which is the last challenging stage before they start repeating. isn’t it nice to have goals in life?

galaga links attacking from outer space!
- great fan site that details strategies for all the challenge stages, complete with animated GIF’s
- some misc trivia at gamefaqs
- review of VC release at IGN
- list of galaga xbox360 achievements
- entry at wikipedia

mike tyson punched out

i don’t know why i set myself up for self-inflicted pain; i never knew i was such a glutton for punishment. i’ve been playing mike tyson’s punch-out!!, another one of those games that had always intrigued me growing up but which i’d never gotten a chance to play. i started off swimmingly and immediately appreciated the game’s great artwork and the fantastic cast of characters (a colorful international cast that wouldn’t be rivalled until street fighter II came out years later). despite being one of the earlier NES games, the gameplay is surprisingly solid even with its limited controls (restricted to only two types of punches, two types of dodges, and a super move), and surprisingly fun, especially considering the game is essentially just a continuous series of boss battles.

everything was going fairly well until i hit the middle of the last circuit (the third of three), and from then on my experience was a confused haze of far more pain than pleasure. i suspect anyone who’s played the game no doubt knows exactly what i mean. talk about memorization and having to backtrack! luckily there are codes for the last two fights. despite feeling entirely bruised by the experience and more than a bit bitter at some of the ridiculous one-hit KO’s, after replaying some of the earlier stages overall i have to give the game a thumbs up. prob. not on my list of “the best games of all time”, but it’s a surprisingly classic game even 20+ years later. and of course when i feel the need for more pain in the future, there’s always the SNES sequel …

some punchy links:
- reviews at vc-reviews.com and IGN
- best FAQ, at gamefaqs, written only a couple of months ago
- redtom’s punch-out!! page: great fansite with loads of stuff, inc. scans of the instruction manual, some ridiculous achievements (like TKO’ing mr. sandman in the first round) with details on how to do them, and even some guitar TAB’s
- awesome commercial from the 80’s featuring the man himself
- entry at wikipedia
- series info at classicgaming.gamespy.com, along with info on the arm wrestling arcade game made by the same group at nintendo (wikipedia entry on the arm wrestling game here)
- youtube has a lot of great videos, including one of what is apparently the famous soda popinski glitch

guidin’ the ninja in ninja gaiden

to break in the new old NES i just got off of ebay i thought i’d start in on the classic ninja gaiden. i’d been interested in the game even back in the days when the NES reined supreme after seeing it repeatedly in the monthly list of top 10 most-played games in nintendo power, and my interest got an additional boost when i played through the game boy ninja gaiden game a couple of years ago.

the ninja gaiden series is famous for its difficulty, so i was leery of starting the NES version of the game instead of the SNES remake which had passwords. i thought i’d just play through the first few levels to get a taster, but i got sucked into it and ended up spending the afternoon playing all the way to the final stage. the difficulty wasn’t too bad, esp. thanks to the infinite continues, although the game generally requires too much memorization and there are a ton of cheap deaths due to enemies strategically placed right where you’re most likely to jump. everything was more or less fine, though, until the final section (act VI) where if you die at the final boss (at the end of stage 6-3) you have to restart all the way back at the beginning of 6-1, which just ends up being a ridiculous amount you have to replay. i ended up beating the first part of the final boss, but after realizing that there was another boss immediately following i just couldn’t face starting all the way back at the beginning of act 6 yet again and just gave up, which is not something i ever do. but it’s kind of good that i did, because it turns out that there’s a 3rd part to the final boss battle, and that would have really sent me over the edge. it was hard for me to put the game on the shelf for the time being, completist that i am, and i’ve contemplated picking it up again, but i just can’t face having to slog through the whole game again and replay act 6 over and over again just to figure out the last two boss battles. the insane amount of having to replay previous parts of a game is a large part of what’s kept me from getting an NES again in the first place, and although i still think of myself as a retro gamer at heart i think this has made me even more cautious about starting NES games than i was before.

as for the game itself, i was surprised at how much the mechanics rip off of the original castlevania, something that wasn’t immediately obvious from the game boy game i’d played. even the enemies almost all have analogues to castlevania, although the powerups in gaiden are slightly improved. i found the wall jumping ability to be underused and the graphics seemed hit or miss, particularly with the backgrounds, although the enemy designs in general are pretty good (despite being ripped off of castlevania). the music is quite good, which i’d been looking forward to from enjoying the music from the game boy game. the much-touted cinematic cutscenes are definitely impressive for the time, although the story is pretty flimsy. all in all, much as i wanted to like the game i just have to chalk this one up as yet another game that was noteworthy for the time but just hasn’t aged gracefully. but i’m still up for playing the sequel (and beating the original once my blood pressure has gone down some).

ninja links:
- the ninja gaiden website at classicgaming.gamespy.com has some nice screenshot comparisons between the NES and SNES versions
- text of the instruction manual
- a walkthrough at IGN
- entry at wikipedia.org
- history of the ninja gaiden series at eurogamer.net
- youtube videos of the intro, the ending, and some gameplay.