Holy shit, there was a fourth Wizards and Warriors?
III and X are weird, weird games. X is a split sequel from II and III is all about multiclassing.
That was some fascinating stuff about the Hogan's Alley "comic". Love the polish Jeremy puts into these things.
Pac-Man? Everybody loves that guy! Nintendo loved Pac-Man so much it made two games just like it, and this episode looks at the pair: Both Clu Clu Land and its import-only sibling, Devil World. Their similarities and differences speak volumes about the game company Nintendo was shaping up to be.
During the PS2 era when they were reviving every IP in sight, I kept hoping for a modern Wizards and Warriors. Like the review says, they're pure 'B' games, but I beat every one to death.
Except this one, which it seems was a good thing.
The publishing rights to those games were bought up by a holding company that has tons of old Acclaim games, so even Microsoft can't re-release the old ones without cutting a deal.
It's a bit upsetting that such a good chronicle of Nintendo/gameboy games are largely ignored.
I am enjoying Good Nintentions a great deal more then Chrontendo, though that mostly has to do with the fact the episodes are an hour long each.
On a related note, I'd like to give a shout out to Kim Justice who did a video covering the history of the Nintendo/Sega 8 and 16 bit era from a European (though still largely British) perspective, including why we often pronounce the NES/SNES as nezz/snezz and not en-ee-ess/ess-en-ee-ess.Skipping a bit out of sequence for this one, as we jump ahead in the NES chronology to perhaps the most fascinating game to arrive in the U.S. in October 1985. Gyromite may not have been influential the way Super Mario Bros. would be, but it played an essential cornerstone role in Nintendo's eventual conquest of the U.S. And, believe it or not, when you play the game the way it was designed to be experienced with a complete R.O.B. setup it can be surprisingly entertaining.
For more on the history of the NES, check out www.goodnintentions.com. And please consider supporting this series through Patreon to make in-depth analyses like this possible: www.patreon.com/gamespite
Gyromite's companion release constitutes the only other game ever officially designed for R.O.B.... and, frankly, we'd all have been better off if R.O.B.'s library had begun and ended with Gyromite. Seemingly rushed to production (the game evidently hit Japanese store shelves a mere month after completion), Stack-Up makes poor use of R.O.B, of the NES, and of players' time and money. At least the music is catchy.
Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, this motocross game is anything but your typical racer with its side-scrolling design and emphasis on physics and jumps, it feels almost like a rough draft for Super Mario Bros. Ah, but there's a dark and terrible secret lurking in Excitebike, hidden just off the main menu... a sign of just how much Nintendo was making up the NES launch as they went along.
What does he mean there was nothing before the Game Boy? There was this:
I had one as a kid and it was neat. It even had a back lit display.
And there was also the bad ass Vectrex from the early 80's, which used D batteries:
But for me the Game Boy was a love it and hate it system. I loved the games, but I hated the screen. That's why I asked my parents for a Game Gear instead. I didn't really get into Game Boy games until I bought the Super Game Boy for myself.
The second half of 1990 gets rolling with the handheld debut of world-class developer/publishing combo Tamtex and Irem. Don't expect anything on the level of Metal Storm here, though; Shisenshou was a visually painfully conversion of a softcore arcade game (minus the smut, of course). Not really getting off on the best foot, alas.
This cooperative platformer occupies a somewhat unfortunate place in history: It attempted to build on the concepts of the original Mario Bros., but it arrived just before Super Mario Bros. set a new standard for run-and-jump action. It's an amusing and quirky game, but its awkward controls leave it completely overshadowed by the masterpiece that was to come.
Mario's final outing before his first adventure in the Mushroom Kingdom has little to do with any other game he ever starred in, and yet feels very much like an evolutionary step in the character's development.
The very first third-party release for NES... mostly. Developed by Irem, based on an Irem arcade game, yet published by Nintendo in both Japan and the U.S., Kung-Fu is something of an edge case. Whatever the case, though, it sure did look awesome back in 1985, with its bold graphics and proto-fighting-game mechanics.
(Yes, the title card says "Episode 11." It's not a flaw, it's a charm point.)
post a picture of that in your pocket and I will concede your point 😉
The NES gets its very first rendition of American football and on launch day, too! All thanks to Irem, who provide the second third-party Black Box title with this conversion of the arcade game by the same title. It's not a straight port, though, adding an entirely new aspect to the game, as well as a multiplayer mode.
Point taken. The batteries for those things were D-cell's and would barely fit in your pockets.
Here's #15, 10-Yard Fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0ZABplg7v8
Must've gotten lost in all of the Zelda threads.
Super Mario Bros is next. Can't wait!
Edit: for real? 2 minutes apart, days after the video is posted?
HA! I was waiting for the E3 heat to die down before posting it. But this close to each other? Now that's something.Edit: for real? 2 minutes apart, days after the video is posted?
The arcade classic makes the trip from NES to Game Boy with all the grace of a young child skipping his training wheels period to ride a mountain bike into traffic. This portable adaptation of a solid console port of a coin-op great totally misses the mark, with terribly compromised gameplay and some gratingly out-of-tune music.
The Coleco tabletop arcade games took four C-cells. Source: I have two of them, and my childhood Donkey Kong still works.
A startlingly good conversion of the classic arcade brawler (or the NES version of it, anyway). But there's one tragic flaw keeping this otherwise excellent port from sitting within Game Boy's top rankings...
On a somewhat related note, for any fellow Canucks out there, Parish's Good Nintentions book is currently $37 on amazon.ca (normally $65).
This is a great deal for Americans as well, as it would be US$30 (normally $50 on amazon.com), though you'd have to pay shipping.
As a Patreon request, we're skipping ahead a couple of years for a quick look at one of the true technological marvels of the Game Boy library: Argonaut's X, a first-person, free-roaming, mission-based, ground and air shoot-em-up. While I'm saving a proper dissection of its game mechanics for whenever we get to Game Boy World 1992, there's more than enough history and trivia surrounding this release to make for a meaty discussion.
(Special thanks to David Morton for this episode request.)
I would like to say this is some brilliant, undiscovered sequel to Taito's wonderful New Zealand Story, but that would be a lie. This odd little game is instead a remake of an old computer game dusted off to launch as a tie-in with a family-oriented Japanese film by the same title. Clumsy, ugly, and simplistic, there's very little to recommend about this game. Avoid it and stick with New Zealand Story instead.
My copy arrived yesterday. I flipped through for a bit, but I don't even know where to start... I don't think this is the kind of book you read from beginning to end, and it's a shockingly massive tome.Bought, thanks for the heads up.
My copy arrived yesterday. I flipped through for a bit, but I don't even know where to start... I don't think this is the kind of book you read from beginning to end, and it's a shockingly massive tome.