NES #49: Robodemons

 

Developer: Color Dreams

Publisher: Color Dreams

Release Date: December 20, 1989

It's finally time to talk about Color Dreams, one of several unlicensed companies that flourished for a couple of years in the early 90s. Actually, Color Dreams was three of several unlicensed companies. They would also go on to release games as Bunch Games and Wisdom Tree. The fact that they kept having to change their name shows that they had a troubled history. Of course, they were operating illegally according to Nintendo. If you don't know, Nintendo consoles originally came with a lock out chip that would keep unlicensed titles from working. The idea was that Nintendo would only release games they approved of, and this would avoid the glut of shovelware that sunk the Atari 2600. Third party publishers were only allowed so many releases a year with quality being a factor in the number. This explains the Nintendo Seal of Quality. It also explains why games would blink when you turned them on. That was the lockout chip getting confused. It is obvious that Nintendo let plenty of stinkers get released. However, very few of the Color Dreams games raise to the level of the worst licensed games. It's hard to say who were the good guys during the unlicensed era. The people who figured out how to bypass the lockout could be seen as rebels getting around Nintendo's greedy policies because they had something to say and wanted to do things there way. However, outside of Tengen and Camerica, who both had famous companies behind them, most unlicensed games were purely amateur. Collectors usually don't even count them as part of the full set. I do, however, and I will review them along with any normal game. Nintendo ran them out of stores by 1991, but they managed to release 21 games during their brief window. Could a tiny inexperienced company have any sort of quality when they were releasing so much so quickly? Well, let's look at Robodemons.

Robodemons is an amateurish oddball, but one that at least plays like a real game. I think if I had rented this game in 1990, I wouldn't have felt ripped off. I sure did that time I rented Crystal Mines and couldn't get it to work, but that's another Color Dreams story. Robodemons is about evil King Kull who took over the Earth by transferring the souls of demons into robots. The don't look like robots though, so the game should probably just be called Demons. They were obviously trying to showcase imagery that Nintendo wouldn't normally allow, so it's full of devils, body parts, and scantily clad women. It's nothing too over the top, but it's still a bit jarring seeing a tied-up woman in a bikini in a Nintendo game. Each level is split into two parts with the first being a shooter and second being a side-scroller. The goals can change slightly from level to level, but typically you are fighting a specific demon in the shooting part and collecting a key to unlock the exit in the second part. It's a decent set-up, and I like how strange and different the side-scrolling parts look. One level you are walking on body parts and another you are in a robot factory. There were plenty of licensed games that didn't get so creative with their level design. The player's weapon is probably the most obvious flaw. It's a slow-moving boomerang that has to either hit something or complete its arc before it can be shot again. It can take a couple of seconds to finish which can be a lifetime in a theoretically fast-paced action game. There are no power-ups to be found, so it's just slow boomerang for the game's entirety. 

The more I played it, the more I noticed how unprofessional it was, but luckily the design flaws mostly worked in my favor. This is a nice change of pace for unlicensed games. Usually there will be glitches and errors that make games unwinnable. With Robodemons, if you can learn how to take advantage of the system than you can actually win. For example, practically no monsters respawn except for a couple of tiny demons. I usually dislike a game with too high of a respawn rate, but it still feels like they only left this feature out because they didn't really know how to do it. The demons don't even respawn after you die, so if you still have a life left your next try will be much easier. There is also a much higher limit on hearts than what appears. The screen only shows five hearts, but I'm not even sure if there is a limit. There are plenty of demons that drop hearts, so I made sure to actually kill them all and save up hearts. I felt fairly invincible after a while. Also, there is usually a powerful enemy guarding the locked exit doors. I discovered very quickly that the best strategy is to just ignore them. You can usually jump right over them and go through the door as long as you have the key. The only bosses that are necessary are a couple in the shooter sections and of course King Kull at the end. I feel like these are all flaws that would've been fixed if the game was professionally made. They are helpful flaws, but they definitely give away the truth behind the game. 

Expectations for unlicensed games are exceedingly low, so the fact that I was able to wring any fun out of Robodemons is no small feat. I can't say it's good exactly, but it's a decent way to start my Color Dreams journey. Maybe if it had a better weapon and it was longer it would be a hidden gem. I beat the game in about two hours, but there's only about ten minutes worth of game. If I knew all the tricks going in, I doubt it would've taken even that long. It does have a plot, but it's all told by text that is extremely difficult to read. Once again, it shows that these guys didn't know what they were doing.

I started this review by saying that most unlicensed games aren't as good as the worst licensed titles. I'm already going to contradict that statement by ranking Robodemons higher than a few of them. I thought it might sneak up into the okay section, but instead it's one of the elite bad games. I ranked it at #137 just behind Mario's Time Machine. It's hard to rank Robodemons above any game with Mario in it, even an iffy educational one. That means there's seven NES games I like less than Robodemons, including one, Baseball, released by Nintendo themselves. I'm not that familiar with the Color Dreams games, so it will be interesting to see where Robodemons ranks overall. Did I just get lucky and play the best one first? Only time will tell. 

NES Quality Percentage: 24/49 or 48.97%