NES #48: Frankenstein: The Monster Returns

Developer: Tose

Publisher: Bandai

Release Date: July 1991

(Unlike this cover, Frankenstein in the game has no chill)

Hey, did you know that Frankenstein is the name of the doctor and not the monster? It's a little-known fact that only gets brought up every time anyone mentions the character. If you imagine a know-it-all man saying this to a woman, then you would probably get along well with Frankenstein author Mary Shelly. It's a book about a lot of things, but it's hard to look past her critique of male privilege. The doctor is allowed to create a life and then quickly abandon it the second things get too hard with no immediate consequences. The monster feels that because he is intelligent, he should automatically be accepted into society. When his forcefulness frightens people, he takes it out on society instead of blaming himself. It's a world where the men make mistakes and expect sympathy while the innocent women in their lives end up being punished. Of course, Hollywood in 1931 wasn't ready for a monster that practically talked his victims to death, so they made the monster a silent brute. The themes of innocent women being punished for man's mistakes still shows up in the movie, but it is much more remembered for Boris Karloff's look and odd pathos. His version of the monster is a killer for sure, but more sympathetic than the chatty, calculating novel version. I bring this all up because 60 years after the famous movie Bandai released a game that throws all the famous interpretations out the window and creates an all-new version of the monster now presented as a cackling super villain. He's more Dr. Doom than Dr. Frankenstein with a new motivation to terrorize and countryside and destroy all who oppose him with an army of possessed minions. Of course, he sets all this in motion by kidnapping and innocent woman. Even with a much wilder premise, the themes of the original book and look of Karloff's movie monster are intact. Also, he's straight up called Frankenstein so just get used to it. What else would you call him anyway? His name is about the least strange thing about this strange game. 

Of course, what else would we expect from Bandai? They were by far the oddest publisher for the NES. They made games that looked primitive and jettisoned typical structures for open-ended strangeness. They adapted little-known IPs and rarely turned them into what we would consider normal games. Bandai is where we got such oddities as Ninja Kid, Dragon Power, and the most infamous of them all, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Just seeing that Banai logo on a game made you know that you were probably going to play something like you had never played before, and it had a very good chance of being garbage. Tose made several of these games, and much like Bandai they had a much brighter future after getting all the weirdness out of their system. They work with Square-Enix now mostly doing remakes of my all-time favorite games. They certainly feel like a company that was in it to last. Even their strangest early games feel like they were made by a team that was really trying. Frankenstein: The Monster Returns is a strange game that is hard to define, but it's certainly not a lazy one. 

The name alone made me think this was going to be a Castlevania clone, and while this comparison comes up in reviews almost constantly, it only resembles Castlevania in its spooky tone. Even then the resemblance is only surface level. Sure, they both have skeletons and ghosts, but Frankenstein is much more varied. Castlevania games are typically grounded in stone castles. Frankenstein takes the protagonist on a journey through much more varied environments. There is a castle, but you'll have to trek through forests and sewers to get there. The gameplay is more like a simplified River City Ransom. It is a somewhat open-ended side scroller with beat-em-up elements. It is divided up into levels, but the levels are full of secret passages and hidden items. They're not all good secrets either. Sometimes a bad jump will send you to an annoying mini boss. I enjoy the presentation though. Environments are vastly different from screen to screen keeping things from ever getting boring. I can't deny it's entertaining. The monsters are odd and challenging, and the overall strangeness of it helps it stand out from countless other NES side scrollers. 

Of course, this is the NES, and Frankenstein's biggest drawback is its difficulty. This is not a game you're going to make much progress on the first time. You start with a weak punch and difficult-to-execute jump kick. Monsters will drop upgrades, and Frankenstein would be practically impossible without them. The problem is that getting hit causes you to lose them. Weapons can be regained if you act quickly, but projectiles are lost for good. The way to beat Frankenstein is to get a projectile early in the game and then never get hit. Luckily backtracking is possible within levels, but it can get a little annoying going back to the beginning of a level to regain a projectile. Frankenstein does have a password and a few continues, but the continues don't reset when you enter your password on your next attempt. It's better to just try the level again if you get a game over and save the continues for later levels. After a few tries I was able to make some progress, so it doesn't cross the line into impossible to play territory. However, the difficulty can be disheartening if you're not used to NES difficulty or just want some goofy game to pass the time. 

I'm pleasantly surprised to say that I had fun with Frankenstein: The Monster Returns. I just love the kooky presentation. I don't think you're going to remember the awkward gameplay moments as much as you are going to remember the over-the-top dialogue and level design. Not every game has hopping tombstones and green-haired medusas. I enjoy the eccentric bosses that branch out a bit from a typical NES horror game. It's not just skeletons and giant bats. It was fun fighting a flying chimera and evil tree spirit for a change. They also have dialogue which gives them actual personalities. It even sneaks in some sympathetic moments as the monsters try to escape from Frankenstein's control. And while it certainly isn't the best-looking game on the system, the levels have enough personality to make up for it. 

So, Frankenstein: The Monster Return somehow sneaks into the good column. I was not expecting much and was pleasantly surprised. It's not super high on the list, but it's still a bit of a hidden gem. I'm ranking it at #82 right above Dracula: Crazy Vampire which was another oddball spooky game. That's a game I feel like I overrated, but I still think it's where Frankenstein belongs. With so many NES oddballs sneaking into the good section I feel that I will have no trouble getting past 100 good ones. I doubt Frankenstein: The Monster Returns is going to make it into the top 100 NES games, but it's certainly worth checking out. 

NES Quality Percentage: 24/28 or 50%

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G01RKJ7-caaal5lgFfGgPfZRGcqWlv4E3E2E615UYKg/edit?usp=sharing

Super Nintendo #9: Super Castlevania IV

 

Developer: Konami

Publisher: Konami

Release Date: 10-31-1991

I love the random nature of my blog so much that I tend to purposely avoid holidays and events on purpose just to be difficult. I'm just as likely to be writing about a Christmas themed volleyball game in October as I am something spooky. Actually, I might do that if I knew of any Christmas themed volleyball games. This year, however, I thought I would actually give in and cover one of the great spooky games. It's that classic Castlevania game with the funny name. Most games being upgraded for Super Nintendo either kept their NES numbering or added "Super" and started over. Konami had to go and do both. They really wanted the player to know that this game is super and it's also the fourth Castlevania game. I guess they were never much for subtlety. Honestly though I think they should've added a colon and named it Super: Castlevania IV because super is more of a description than a title. What they made was a Castlevania game that is just like the original except improved in every way. It's one of those great early Super Nintendo game that illustrated why the upgrade was so important. It really is stunning how many must-play games Super Nintendo had before its first Christmas. 

It's always interesting to play an old favorite that I haven't picked up in a long time because it's never quite how I remember. It's not too much of a surprise that Super Castlevania IV is difficult. That's pretty much a given for a side-scrolling Castlevania game. But it's not difficult in the way I expected. It's not an ultra-intense game that throws endless waves of enemies at the player. I was actually surprised by the game's leisurely pace. It's not quite as stiff as the NES Castlevania games, but Simon Belmont is still in no particular hurry to meet Dracula. There are moments where the enemies on screen will give you plenty of trouble, but they are deliberately spaced enemies and not endlessly respawing hordes. What makes Super Castlevania difficult, and also what makes it great, is that the game is always giving you a new experience. It's a slowly unfolding adventure where every level has a new surprise.

Super Castlevania IV is a remake of the original game on its surface, but the levels are much more intricate. It starts with the very first level's chain-link wall. Having multiple planes was still novel for a side-scroller, and you have to switch between the front and back to avoid holes. Famously there is a rotating room that has Simon hanging by his whip while waiting for the room to stop spinning. Konami throws out every graphical trick of the early SNES era including a spinning cylindrical room and giant candelabras that have to be jumped across. I can't say that the levels have much consistency, and despite them taking place mostly within Dracula's castle they can look radically different even from screen to screen. The developers were not concerned with making the castle seem like any kind of real place, so weirdness and fun are prioritized over authenticity. Sure, it makes sense that Dracula would have a library, but what does he need with a long hallway full green slime pools? Or a gallery consisting mostly of pictures of crossbows? Is it normal for castle to have interior towers? And parts of the castle seem to be actively working against Dracula. Simon would've never made it of there didn't just happen to be all those floating books going across those large gaps. Those books definitely have a mind of their own and they have aligned themselves with the good guys. Also, I would hate it if my library was full of giant pitfalls. I would be walking along with my nose in a book and that would be the end of me. That gives Super Castlevania two things in common with Gordo 106. They both have odd names and floors full of dangerous pits. Hey that's another thing I love about Super Castlevania IV. It gives me an excuse to reference terrible, obscure Atari Lynx games.

I could talk about the great levels all day, and the experience is improved by Konami finally making a Castlevania game with good controls. It's smoother than earlier games, there is a separate button for bonus weapons, and most importantly Simon's whip can now be swung every which way. I can't even describe how much better Castlevania games are when you can aim your weapon up and down. Simon can also swing his whip around limply like a rhythmic gymnast's ribbon. It's weaker than the normal attack, and is more for show than anything, but it does come in handy occasionally. What was cooler in 1991 than being able to swing your whip in any direction and climb stairs backwards? 

Super Castlevania IV is also a game that will keep a player busy for a while. When the original Castlevania came out far too many games had to be completed in one sitting. I don't think this is something that very many people miss from the good old days. Castlevania is an incredibly hard game, and I don't know if I've ever even made it halfway through without getting frustrated. Luckily, by 1991 many more games had passwords. This also meant that Super Castlevania IV could have more levels without getting too frustrating. I can take a break and come back if it gets too hard. I probably don't need to sell the concept of passwords to people in 2024, but it really is an important feature. The games were getting bigger in addition to being better looking. 

I'm starting to ramble a bit so I should probably wrap this review up. It can sometimes be hard to talk about such a familiar game and make it eloquent without just rattling off goofy compliments. Super Castlevania is going to rank high, but not as high as I initially expected. The top of my list is starting to get crowded with my favorite games. This means Super Castlevania IV is getting pushed all the way down to lucky #13. It's my second-best Super Nintendo game so far just behind Soul Blazer. It does break up the RPG monopoly at the top, but I still need more variety on the list. Maybe I'll expand into even more SNES genres. Did they ever make a good racing game for the system? Super Castlevania IV is definitely a great game for the Halloween season. It has the perfect atmosphere right down to the music, and most importantly is just fun to play. Castlevania would have a bit of an odd life in the 16-bit era with some interesting games but not any blockbusters until Symphony of the Night completely revamped the series. Symphony of the Night is the game that puts the "vania" in Metroidvania, and I think this is the type of gameplay associated with the series now. So, it's fun to go back and play a truly old school, level-by-level side scroller. It's easy to see why the Super Nintendo caught on so quickly. 

Super Nintendo Quality Percentage: 7/9 or 77.78%

Super Nintendo #8: The 7th Saga

Developer: Produce

Publisher: Enix

Release Date: 4-23-93

(Does anyone else think this cover makes it look like the hero is turning into a giant praying mantis?)

The 7th Saga is a game with quite the reputation, or at least as much of a reputation as a thirty-year-old game that nobody's ever heard of can have. It's a little-known RPG that is remembered mainly for being very hard. It's often thought of as the most difficult RPG on Super Nintendo, an epic grind that takes an hour or more of fighting the weakest enemies just to make it to the next town. Of course, the game's relative obscurity means that this reputation is overblown. More people have heard about this game than have played it. It's a game I have owned for years and only played a little bit out of fear. I didn't want to get twenty or thirty hours in only to realize that it was going to be too difficult to finish. I finally worked up the courage to actually attempt a playthrough, and I hate to sound boastful, but it really wasn't that hard. Now I've probably spent more time in my life playing RPGs than any other form of entertainment, but I don't think I'm that good at them. There are countless games I have started that got frustrating and I put on hold. If I could actually finish all the RPGs I've started, my backlog would shrink by 100 games or more. I am much better at enjoying them that I am at finishing them. So, take it from a true mediocre enthusiast when I say that The 7th Saga isn't as difficult as people say it is. Don't be afraid to give it a try. I've you're an obsessive RPG fan like I am, you will probably find something to like.

(This game (contains too many) rocks!)

I can see why people talk about the difficulty so much, because it really stands out in an otherwise traditional turned-based RPG. Of course, I love traditional RPGs so I'm not going to complain about that specifically. If you have played any than you know the drill. You visit towns, travel between them while fighting just an absurd number of monsters, save up to get better equipment, explore dungeons, and fight some screen-filling bosses. I'd say this is one of the most straightforward of all Super Nintendo RPGs. There aren't many side quests and it's hard to do anything out of order. Mostly this is a good thing. I think I played through it so quickly because I always knew what I was going to get. Honestly, for such a notorious game I was surprised how quickly I got into it. The developers certainly got that part right.

The most unique aspect of The 7th Saga, at least by 1993 standards, is its odd cast of characters. At the beginning of the game, you pick one of seven characters with mostly traditional RPG roles. All the non-chosen characters are sent out on the same quest, so you will encounter them along your journey. 
This doesn't always go well. There is room for another party member and sometimes they will want to join you. Other times they will fight you for your runes. I think other times they just say hello, but that's not very interesting. I think it's the character battles that is the most infamous aspect of the game. If they want to fight you in some random town than losing is no big deal. That's why they created the reset button. However, there is at least one moment where a fight is necessary, and you can't level your way out of it. Your rival levels up with you making the potential battle intimidating to say the least. I got very lucky in my playthrough and was joined by my rival. I sampled some of these battles though and they can be tough. I imagine this is where many players give up. 

(This game does have some random hidden items that make the search command not completely useless for a change)

Still, none of this bothered me too much. My main complaint is how the game looks. I just wrote about how impressed I was by Dragon Warrior managing to look distinct even in 1986. Well, The 7th Saga is the complete opposite side of the scale. I can't imagine an RPG looking more generic than this. It looks like it was made in an early version of RPG Maker. It's a game full of ugly, practically identical towns of grey cobblestones and dusty trails. All the terrain looks the same expect for the obligatory snowy area which is white instead of brown. It's a game where you can't tell if you are in the ruins of an ancient civilization or a typical item shop. There might be some different colors, but the difference between caves, mountain passes, and castles are practically nil. It's disappointing for a Super Nintendo game from 1993 for sure. It doesn't ruin the experience, but I expect better this far into a console's run.

I also think it's funny how deceptive the marketing was. Most of the literature I've seen about this game from the time was along the lines of "it has seven characters to choose from, that means you could play forever with endless combinations." But this isn't Saga Frontier. You can pick a character, but they all experience basically the same quest and there is only one generic ending. It's not a game heavy on plot to begin with. You might encounter some of your companions in different places, but after around the halfway point even this becomes infrequent. I think the second half of the game is basically identical no matter who you pick. It's not like they have much unique dialogue or personalities either. The dialogue is just as generic as the graphics. So, it may be a fun game to play through once, but I don't see much purpose in playing the game seven times. It might've seemed novel in 1993, but it was mostly a marketing gimmick. 

(Get used to the combat screen. You're going to be here a lot)

I hope more than anything that this review takes a bit of the infamy from the game and actually encourages people to play it. I really did have a good time with The 7th Saga, and it's a game I put off playing for a long time. It's not an epic slog that you have to play through seven times. It's a medium-to-difficult game that only requires one good playthrough to experience. It's mostly RPG comfort food that is fun to play even if it's not quite in the upper echelon of SNES RPGs. I love a game with incremental growth. I love the excitement of gaining a level or two and seeing if I am now ready to venture to that next town. The 7th Saga has many of these moments, and it was fun more often than it was frustrating. Sure, the stat gains are minimal in the American version, but levels don't really take that long to gain, and the added difficulty keeps combat from becoming rote. Every time they threw a new wrinkle into the game, like suddenly making the party unable to cast spells, it actually made the game more fun. It may feature cozy gameplay, but they never let you get too comfortable. 

The 7th Saga is coming in at #26 on the overall list which is impressive to say the least. I've played enough games now that I have 87 in the good column. That means that games in the upper third are starting to become actually high quality and not just good for what I have played so far. It's my third best SNES game, but I may be just a bit biased. The top 5 are all RPGs and the bottom three are everything else. I need to play some other types of SNES games. Maybe it's time to start getting to the true classics. Or perhaps it's time to play some dusty old trash that nobody cares about. Anyone know any interesting SNES Games I could try? 

Super Nintendo quality percentage: 5/8 or 62.5%

NES #47: Dragon Warrior

 

Developer: Chunsoft

Publisher: Nintendo

Release Date: August 1989

All these years later and I'm still shocked that all the 8-bit Dragon Quest games made it to America. RPGs were popular on computers, but it took a while for them to gain momentum on consoles. There is a technological reason for this of course, but I think that many RPGs from the 8-bit era hold up. There were many great developers in the 80s and 90s who could get the most out of whatever platform they were working with. It's also no secret that Japan loved them even with less advanced graphics and only two buttons. Having pop-up menus instead of memorizing dozens of keystrokes was apparently not that much of a deterrent. Still, most of Japan's RPGs stayed in Japan with only a few oddballs making it over that didn't exactly set the world on fire. Oh, you're going to send over Deadly Towers but keep the Heracles games for yourself? That's certainly a choice. The best RPG for the NES pre-Dragon Warrior is probably Zelda 2, which is more of a hybrid and is often considered the black sheep of the series despite it being a masterpiece. Seriously, Zelda 2 is great. So, this is where I'm going to give Nintendo some credit. They saw something in the Dragon Quest series and practically forced it to be a hit in America. They polished up an already three-year-old game and when it didn't sell as well as they had hoped gave it away with Nintendo Power subscriptions. It was the third best-selling game for Nintendo in 1989 which likely made it the most well-known RPG in the states until the Final Fantasy games hit Super Nintendo. However, is Dragon Warrior actually a good game? Or does its already old-fashioned gameplay by 1989 standards hold it back even further in 2024? Is it a game that is more important than it is good? Do you even have to ask? Dragon Warrior is a classic.

For the last 25 years Dragon Warrior has been my comfort game. It always cheers me up when I am feeling down. That's because I love RPGs more than anything, and Dragon Warrior is such a textbook RPG that it's infinitely appealing. It's everything I love about the genre condensed into a wonderful retro package. There are basically two things to do in Dragon Warrior: build up your character and explore. The world is fairly small but wide open, and there's not that much in terms of directions. The main way you can tell if you wander into the wrong area is by stumbling upon a monster that is too strong. The quest is laid out at the very beginning of the game and it's about as basic as it gets. There's a princess to be saved and a Dragon Lord to defeat. This is accomplished by solving cryptic clues, collecting some MacGuffins, and of course leveling up. The leveling will probably turn off some gamers, but I love it. For one thing the combat is exciting. There's not much mindless grinding in Dragon Warrior unless of course you want it to take 100 hours. But when I'm fighting monsters that are close to my level I'm constantly having to watch over my character. Death means losing half your gold, so it's best to try to stay as healthy as possible with healing spells and herbs. It's good to stay close to towns, but of course many of the earlier towns are surrounded by weak monsters that quickly become pointless. Equipment gets very expensive very fast, so I'm always trying to find ways to travel as lightly as possible. Buying healing items and wings for fast traveling would makes things easier in the short term, but I'm trying to save up thousands of dollars. This decision making is definitely part of the fun, and it certainly helps illustrate that Dragon Warrior is much more than mindless level grinding.

Of course, it also helps that Dragon Warrior takes place in a fun, vibrant world. For many of us Westerners approaching middle age, Dragon Warrior was our introduction to the art of Akira Toriyama. His lively, instantly recognizable style graced many projects over the years, most famously the Dragon Ball series, but he was one of the most important faces of the Dragon Quest series from the beginning up until his untimely death earlier this year. The cartoony monsters certainly set the game apart from the more grounded visuals of western RPGs. In most games, slimes would just be formless blobs. In Dragon Warrior, however, they are smiling, Hershey Kiss shaped mascots. They're one of the first things you see in the game, and it's no wonder they become so iconic. Actually, many of the cutest and simplest monsters are near the beginning. That's an approach Pokémon would perfect a decade later. The fun visuals contrast nicely with the medieval dialogue. Apparently, Nintendo was trying to make the game more serious, but the knight-speak only makes it funnier. It's a great mix that the series has always kept to a degree. The games are great at never getting too serious or too silly. 

Even the game's more primitive aspects are endearing. I should be annoyed that I have to open up my menu and select a command if I want to talk to someone or climb stairs, but I still find this charming. Maybe it's because there aren't that many people or stairs around so it's not that frequent. I just see it as a fun nod to an earlier time. I'm not as nostalgic as I used to be, but I do get nostalgic for RPG menu screens. The slow pace might turn some people off, but I think it works in context. The relaxed pace and pleasant world help balance out all the stressful battles. I think the only real "this game is old" complaint I have is that locked doors re-lock themselves after you leave an area. Those keys are expensive and can only be carried three-at-a-time, so it can be hard to keep up with which ones I have previously opened. It was still very exciting when I finally found the key store for the first time though. 

No, the minor things don't hurt Dragon Warrior much. I think the only think that could hurt the game's ranking is everything that came out later. Dragon Quest is one of the longest running RPG series, and even with all the spinoff games there is a stunning consistency. The main series doesn't have many black sheep or missteps, so many of the mechanics introduced in Dragon Warrior would be refined and perfected in the years to come. I don't think Dragon Warrior is going to end up being the lowest ranked game in the series, but I do know what's coming and I know just how great some of the games are. 

I played and ranked Dragon Warrior right now as a little reward to myself. I've been stressed lately, and I knew revisiting Dragon Warrior would help. It really is a game near and dear to my heart, and because of this I might overrate it just a bit. You know how I just said it's not even one of the best games in the series? Well now it's my #3 game overall. That's right, I like Dragon Warrior better than The Legend of Zelda. They are both similar games with similar early-NES problems, but for me a game is just better when I can gain levels and buy equipment. I never felt like any time was wasted even if I was somewhat aimless. The Legend of Zelda has a lot of aimless wandering that just doesn't feel as purposeful. Also, Dragon Warrior has better combat. So, the Nintendo dominance at the top of my list continues, and if I decide to play more Dragon Quest games in the near future expect to see a lot more of those too. I foresee good things on the horizon. 

NES Quality Percentage: 23/47 or 48.93%

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G01RKJ7-caaal5lgFfGgPfZRGcqWlv4E3E2E615UYKg/edit?usp=sharing

Atari 2600 #23: Demolition Herby

Developer: Telesys

Publisher: Telesys

Release Date: 1983

Telesys pivoted very quickly from their original strategy of doing uniquely funny games. That's not necessarily a bad thing considering the quality of their first three. Instead, they decided to go with the strategy of so many third-party publishers and just copy an already popular arcade game. The game in question is Amidar. Although not as remembered as some of the other arcade greats, Amidar was one of Konami's most popular and influential early games. It's a Pac-Man influenced game that has the player moving around a grid while collecting dots and filling in squares. It's an addictive game that launched its own subgenre of grid capture games. Pepper II for Colecovision is an excellent example. Atari 2600 saw several variations on the grid capture formula including an official version of Amidar released by Parker Brothers in November of 1982. MobyGames has the release date for Demolition Herby as February of 1983. That certainly sounds like they were trying to cash in on a trend. Thankfully Demolition Herby isn't an exact clone. It makes some changes to the formula which are both positive and negative. At least it keeps up with the Telesys trend of having a funny title, and Don Ruffcorn even used his full name. That's already two points in its favor. Well, metaphorical points anyway. I am not going to start doing a point system for these reviews. 

The biggest difference between Demolition Herby and Amidar is the speed. Amidar is surprisingly slow even in its arcade incarnation. It's a game more about careful planning than twitchy reflexes. Demolition Herby ramps up the speed to an almost frantic pace. The dots are gone making Demolition Herby much more about escaping from danger. You play as the titular Herby being chased by other cars on a perfectly rectangular grid. The goal is to fill in rectangular sections of the grid by driving over all four sides. There are no power-ups to fight off enemies with, but holding down the button will make Herby move even faster. The catch is that turbo mode won't fill in squares and fuel drains faster. If you run out of fuel, you lose a life. The only way to regain fuel is to fill in grid sections. You get a bigger bonus if you fill in two squares at once, and this is basically the whole goal of the game. I appreciate the extra speed, but there is a problem with the design.

Demolition Herby is fast, but this necessitates a somewhat tedious design. Usually, grid capture games will have more varied and interesting maps. Amidar features rectangles of all different sizes and multiple screens. The more varied gameplay helps keep things from geting boring. Demolition Herby features the same shapes set up in the same way forever. This caused me to play every section of every level in basically the same way. Sure, there are enemies to avoid, but they feel more like nuisances than challenges. You can't really do much with them, just speed away. I wish there was some sort of powerup that allowed me to attack the enemies. The games needs about 50% more demolition and 50% less Herby. Alright, so maybe I don't actually have a problem with the amount of Herby. I just want some more variety.

I know that all the Telesys games have been inspired by other games so far, but Demolition Herby is the one that can't hide behind quirky originality. Cosmic Creeps stood out as an original game despite it being mostly a Space Invaders clone. Demolition Herby is a better game than Cosmic Creeps, but the inevitable comparisons to Amidar make the flaws really stand out. I had some fun playing Demolition Herby, but it was a fun that didn't last very long, and I don't think this is a game I am going to take out and play very often when I get the urge to play Atari. Honestly, I liked Fast Food just a little bit better because it was so distinct and had fun graphics. It's that classic battle of burgers vs rectangles. It comes up a lot, but burgers win every time. In this case it's more of a moral victory since they're both stuck in the purple section. They're a couple of middling games coming in at 107 and 108 overall. I can't say what people were doing on Saturday afternoons in 1983 because I wasn't born yet, but I bet there were better things to do than play Demolition Herby. 

Atari Quality Percentage: 9/23 or 39.13%

Atari 2600 #22: Cosmic Creeps

Developer: Telesys

Publisher: Telesys

Release Date: 1982

(At least it has A+ box art)

Oddly this is the second Atari 2600 game I've written about so far that has the word Cosmic in the title and is about futuristic mass transit. That's not something I would have expected. It's not like the word cosmic automatically implies futuristic space busses. Hopefully the other cosmic Atari games explore some different themes. I think I still have about a half dozen to play. Initially I wrote about Cosmic Commuter, which is a game that I played even before I had my own Atari 2600 and therefore has some nostalgia attached to it. For that reason, Cosmic Creeps will always feel like the copycat. That may be a little bit unfair considering Cosmic Creeps is older, but it's hard to top Activision. Actually, Cosmic Creeps is hard to date exactly, and this is one of the things that makes writing about Atari difficult. Nobody was paying that much attention at the time, and so many game companies were gone without a trace before reviews could even appear. I've looked at several sources and they all seem to give different dates for the release of the Telesys games. They might've been released in one big chunk at the end of 1982, or they could've trickled out into 1983. Cosmic Creeps is probably the third game they released, but the serial number implies that it was the second they started working on. I can say that the first three (CocoNuts, Fast Food, and Cosmic Creeps) are very common while the last three (Ram It, Stargunner, and Demolition Herby) are all fairly rare. I'm guessing their first three games didn't sell as well as they expected so they had to cut back on production for the last three. Games like Cosmic Creeps probably didn't give consumers much hope, either. The credits also imply that Cosmic Creeps wasn't thought of very highly. Don Ruffcorn is credited with designing three Telesys games. The other two games have his full name in the manual. In Cosmic Creeps he is cryptically credited as Donyo. I have a feeling this was an Alan Smithee situation, and he was trying to distance himself from the game. There's no way to know for sure, but after playing Cosmic Creeps I can see why it could be true. 

(Putting their name at the bottom of the screen is a good early example of "not the flex you think it is")

Cosmic Creeps is one of those boring Atari games that also doesn't make much sense. If you were to get this game in the wild and try to play it, you would probably die over and over again without accomplishing anything. Of course, you won't feel that accomplished after you have figured out how to play it either, but I'm not going to worry about that too much. I think the developers made it strange to hide the fact that it's very boring to actually play. I call this the Donyo Effect. The game consists of two screens. On the first you have to race from the bottom of the screen to the top while avoiding ambiguous space stuff. Third party games got really random with their graphics sometimes. This part can be tricky because you, the player, are in control. You control when the character pops onto the screen. Be careful because if you push up on the controller you will touch a red barrier and float away forever. It took me a while to figure out that the moving planet on the bottom of the screen determines where the character would pop up. It can still be tricky because sometimes there are tiny bits of red that are easy to miss, and there are also what appear to be comets flying by. However, complete your arduous trek to the spaceship at the top of the screen and you are rewarded with a very appropriate prize: nothing whatsoever. That's right, you earn no points for completing the first half of the game. That is pure laziness during an era where high scores were everything. Would it have been so hard to include a timed bonus or even a preset number of points? Even just an arbitrary 100 points would've been somewhat satisfying. This screen is confusing, overly difficult, and pointless both figuratively and literally. 

(Maybe it's called Cosmic Creeps because of the way the aliens slowly creep up the screen)

The second section of the game is where the action is because it actually lets you shoot at something and earn points. It now plays like a stripped-down Space Invaders with a couple of aliens chasing after a child moving up the screen. If the child makes it to the ship without being captured by the alien or taken out by friendly fire, then you get 1500 points. Don't worry though. If you accidentally shoot one of the space children, they are merely "bopped". I'm not sure what that means, but at least the people who wrote the manual cared enough to make sure their video game didn't have you unintentionally murdering children. This part could be fun if there was a bit more to it. The aliens don't do anything except move up the screen, and they are large targets. I had to make myself not shoot at them to see what would happen if they made it to the top. My game was over, but it never happened organically. I just stayed in one spot and shot aliens until time ran out. I must've done something wrong though because the manual says the game continues if you get 5000 points before the sun sets, but I achieved that almost every time I played, and it was still game over. I tried to find a YouTube playthrough but of course they all last about three minutes and don't help much. I know it must be true because the Twin Galaxies high score is over 180,000 points. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I could never get a game to last longer than that single round. I didn't really mind my game ending though, because I couldn't really see it getting much more fun. The manual states that there are never more enemies on the screen, so all they could do is get faster. That's not much of an extra challenge.

So Cosmic Creeps is a dud. The premise isn't terrible, but they took the easiest path in both sections. The first section is completely pointless, and the second is boring. It quickly becomes a game of staying in one spot and shooting a lifeless alien. Space Invaders was already five years old by the time Cosmic Creeps came out, and even the Atari version had a whole screen full of ships that actually shot at the player. Instead of adding to the Space Invaders formula, Cosmic Creeps subtracts almost everything. It's a dull game. In fact, it is so dull that it is going to make apologists happy. It's going into the subset of Atari games that are worse than E.T. It's the third one so far, but it is the first I have ranked that was widely released in the United States. Inca Gold and Birthday Mania are much worse, but I highly doubt anyone in the U.S. had played them in the pre-emulation days. So, fear not E.T. fans. You can at least tell younger generations that Cosmic Creeps was a real game that was worse. For those keeping score at home, it is 152/171 on the overall list and 20/22 on the Atari 2600 specific list. Maybe Telesys should just stick with arcade clones and space shooters. Those are usually successful. 

Atari 2600 quality percentage: 9/22 or 40.9%

Atari 2600 #21: Fast Food

Developer: Telesys

Publisher: Telesys

Release Date: October 1982

Fast Food is certainly a good example of what the company was trying to be. It's another funny game with an even more ridiculous cover than CocoNuts. There's just something undeniably fun looking about it. Look at all that food flying around! Look at those disembodied lips which remind me of old Twizzlers ads! Look at that decidedly car-less drive-in! If I had seen this one at a store in 1982, I might've bought it just because it looked like so much fun. I mean, I did see it on a store shelf at some point and buy it, but I would buy any Atari game as long as it's not too expensive. I have no idea who did the cover art for Telesys, but I hope they survived the game crash and had a long career. For all I know they really did make those Twizzlers ads. It's a shame we never really know these things. Telesys was founded by a man named Richard Taylor, and that's such a common name that MobyGames has over 700 of them in their database. That's not very helpful from a research perspective. I did find a picture of him in a vintage magazine article that also referred to Telesys games as "funny." I guess they don't really look that much different in 2024 than they did in 1982. 

(The legend himself!)

I would say that Fast Food is about as simple as it gets, but I've played CocoNuts. Fast Food is at least more complicated than that. It's a very simple premise that you might be able to glean from the cover art. You are a disembodied mouth trying to eat all of the flying food you possibly can. Fast Food ups the ante by allowing you to move vertically as well as horizontally. It's hard to get away with horizontal-only motion unless you are Space Invaders or Galaga, so it's nice that they only tried that experiment once. The only thing you are not supposed to eat are the purple pickles. Eat too many of them and its game over. Hey, you don't have to tell me twice. I can't say I've ever seen anything tubular and purple and wanted to eat it. The different types of food only move in straight lines, but they are worth different amounts of points and travel at different speeds. I appreciate the attempt at variety, but I don't see anyone strategizing in this game. They are just going to catch whatever they can. It gets frantic fast. Every so often the screen says, "You are getting fatter" and then everything speeds up. It's a shame they couldn't animate the fattening, but the fine folks at Telesys weren't exactly miracle workers. 

(I hope you weren't expecting anything else. This is just a one screenshot kind of game)

I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but the problem with Fast Food is the same one that plagued Atari 2600 games in general. It's just too simple for extended play. My games always last around the same amount of time, and I almost always get close to 1000 points. Those purple pickles start coming on fast, so even when I start out well everything goes downhill quickly. It's just hard to avoid the inevitable when everything starts moving so fast. I'm not going to be leaving behind a worse food item for a better one because there just isn't time for it. I don't know what anything is worth, and I don't really care. I'm just trying to avoid purple pickles.  

And this is going to sound like a weird complaint, but I can't get over how weird the smacking mouth in this game looks. I get that they wanted to animate something because that was always impressive in the early 80s, but that thing doesn't look anything like a real mouth. You would expect some teeth or a tongue, but those red fleshy masses barely even look like lips. They look more like two tongues covered in bubble gum flapping against each other. Or perhaps a toothless mouth covered in denture cream trying to open and close. It's shown from an odd side view which doesn't work at all. They should've done a front view and had the teeth opening or closing. Honestly a non-moving mouth would've been preferable. It's better than having what looks like two uncooked burger patties kissing. 

While definitely an improvement over CocoNuts, Fast Food is still a middle of the road Atari 2600 game. I have a little fun with it from time to time, but only being a little fun does not make a game actually good. Atari games can be thrilling and addictive, but Fast Food gets a little old after a few minutes. I can see why companies like Telesys failed so quickly. Video games were much more expensive at the time adjusted for inflation. Getting a new Atari game could run you something in the equivalent range of 80 or 90 dollars. That's a big investment for something you're going to get bored with in five minutes. I doubt any of the fringe 3rd party companies had any major hits because it was just too expensive. Luckily, this is 2024 where you can get Fast Food for only ten dollars. That's a fair price for a game based on poorly animated mouths and flying pickles. Fast food ranks at #107 overall which puts it right in the middle of the Atari section. Most Atari games in the purple section are worth playing for enthusiasts, so I'd call that a victory for now. It seems like there are a couple of Telesys games I like, so hopefully there are some hidden treasures to uncover moving forward. 

Atari quality percentage 9/19 or 47.36%

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G01RKJ7-caaal5lgFfGgPfZRGcqWlv4E3E2E615UYKg/edit?usp=sharing