NES #13: Renegade

Developer: Technos Japan

Publisher: Taito

Release Date: January 1988

(Even the box art can't make it past the first screen)

 

Although Renegade plays like a proto-Double Dragon it is actually the first entry in the long running Kunio-kun series. This is a series that North Americans are familiar with probably without even realizing it. It’s more of a setting than an actual series so each game can be radically different. Most people who have played Super Dodge Ball and River City ransom probably didn’t know they were part of the same universe even with the similar sprites, but they are all Kunio-kun games. So if anyone ever asks you what is the sequel to Renegade you can tell them it is Super Dodge Ball. Hey you learned something today.

(I feel sorry for  the people just trying to go home from work on this subway)

 

Renegade is a game I remember renting several times as a kid and never getting past the first screen. Its brutal difficulty is both intentional and a consequence of bad design. Unlike in Double Dragon where the enemies will enter from off screen and give you a chance to mentally prepare, Renegade plops you down into a battle already in progress. There’s almost no time to get ready. Sometimes the new screen will load with the enemies already attacking. That is not a good thing especially since Renegade doesn’t need any extra help being difficult. Unlike in Double Dragon you punch and kick in opposite directions. Because of this the developers felt like it was okay to have you constantly surrounded by enemies. Other than a brief section on a motorcycle the whole game is fighting groups of bad guys on fixed or slightly scrolling screens. It is overwhelming to say the least, but when it works it can be fun.

(The one time you're not standing and punching)

 

Renegade only takes about fifteen minutes to play through so I don’t have as much to say as I usually do. It’s about half the length of Double Dragon even though it has more levels. It’s really just fight and move on with very little complexity. I did enjoy the urban setting however. Early NES games tended to have a more fantasy look, but Renegade keeps it mostly in the real world. Levels take place on city streets and back alleys, and each one of them fits thematically. Of course they had to throw in a confusing maze level. Developers loved these during the NES era even though most gamers hated them. It was a way to add fake difficulty in a game where you just walk and punch. Still, I did enjoy stumbling onto a motorcycle gang in the middle of a house. They had to include a little Nintendo weirdness after all.

(Hey no motorcycles in the house!)

 

I had an alright time playing Renegade, but it certainly has its flaws. It’s too short and difficult to leave that much of an impression. I was playing it on Evercade with save states so I was able to see it through to the end, but in its original state I have never been able to make much progress and never felt that motivated to get better. It’s not a complete failure, but it’s fitting right into the purple section between other early NES games Tennis and Hogan’s Alley. I also moved Evoland up a few spaces because I thought about it too hard. Hey this list is final and definitive, but that doesn’t mean I can’t change it.

 

Nintendo quality percentage: 7/13 = 53.84%

 

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. The Legend of Zelda

3. Galaga

4. Donkey Kong

5. Exodus: Ultima III

6. Pac-Mania

7. Wrecking Crew

8. Super Pac-Man

9. Pac-Man

10. Viva Pinata

11. Dragon View

12. Excitebike

13. Drakkhen

14. Arc the Lad

15. Clu Clu Land

16. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

17. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

18. Metro-Cross

19. Double Dragon

20. Ice Climber

21. Gaplus

22. Dragon Spirit

23. Pinball (NES)

24. Ninja Golf

25. Super Soccer

26. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

27. Red Sea Crossing

28. Baraduke

29. Evoland

30. Tennis

31. Renegade

32. Hogan’s Alley

33. Gamma-Attack

34. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

35. Galaxian

36. Cosmic Commuter

37. Hot Pixel

38. PocketBike Racer

39. Wild Gunman

40. Defunct

41. Gyruss (2600)

42. Looney Tunes Racing

43. Squidlit

44. Baseball

45. Birthday Mania

46. Bad Street Brawler

47. Burly Men at Sea

48. X-Men (HyperScan)

49. My Name is Mayo

50. Marvel Heroes

51. Ben 10

NES #12: Double Dragon

Developer: Technos Japan

Publisher: Tradewest

Release Date: June 1988

(Was there any video store in America that didn't have one of these?)

 

Double Dragon is a hard game to review. It’s one of those NES games that everyone seemed to have a copy of even if they didn’t remember buying it. Everybody played it and everybody liked it. It went on to influence a whole generation of games and even had its own bad 90s movie like other giants Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter. It’s such an indelible part of late 80s culture that it’s hard to look at objectively. When I play it I’m transported right back to my childhood. So many warm memories come flooding back just by seeing those opening screens and hearing a little bit of the music. However, of all the fondly remembered NES games this is one of the least great from a modern perspective. As an adult in 2020 I can’t help but see all the late 80s flaws. It is a fun game, but it is certainly not a great one.

(It's about to be conveyor belt 1 and Abobo 0)

 

Probably the most famous part about Double Dragon is the difficulty. Its arcade credentials are on full display. There are only three lives and no continues, and despite having only four levels it is practically impossible to finish. My experience with Double Dragon as a kid is based solely on the first two and a half levels. I never got any farther until I played it with save states. Still I always loved those levels. I think they knew they were making a hard game so they put the better levels at the front. Everyone remembers the conveyor belt and skyscraper sections. Sadly by the third level it’s mostly rocks and ladders. Of course by then you will be so busy fighting you won’t have time to notice. There is also a clock constantly ticking so there’s not much time for strategy. You have to be aggressive if you want any chance to win. Also this version of the game has levels to gain that unlock new moves. That was a very clever way to make it feel more like a console game. It also makes the player want to make sure they fight every enemy even if it can be skipped.

(Enjoy the final well-designed level!)

 

So what keeps this game from being one of the greats? As I alluded to earlier it all falls apart after level two. By the end of level two you’ve seen just about everything. All the enemies start being recycled over and over to the point of tedium. Even most of the bosses are the same enemies only slightly harder. The first two levels have a great urban look and allow for a full range of movement. Level three starts with a long forest section with nothing but the same enemies to fight over and over. Most of the fun weapons are gone by this point leaving nothing but hand-to-hand combat. What’s worse is that it then moves into a cave where the game becomes strictly side scrolling. I appreciate the extra hazards in the cave, but for a game focused on combat they sure work hard to make it boring with the side scrolling sections becoming almost strictly button mashing. Also, of the moves I unlocked the only ones I used much were the jump kick and the behind-the-back punch. All of the other moves were usually triggered by accident. So what starts out as a well-designed combat game becomes a tedious side scroller where the best strategy is to spam the same moves over and over again. I think the only reason they added a timer was to keep people from only jump kicking. You have to mix in some quicker moves if you want to win.

(Different color, same Abobo quality)

 

It all culminates with one of the most intense boss fights in the history of gaming as you are bombarded with practically every enemy in the whole game plus a few extra difficult new ones. I just don’t see how anyone could’ve beaten this game back in the day. It’s hard to even get there with the final section taking place on a cliff that is very easy to walk off of. I know if I had ever gotten there as a kid I would’ve walked right off the side and never made it back again. It’s the type of NES boss fight that is both impressive and annoying at the same time. I know if I was playing it legitimately on an NES it would drive me absolutely bonkers. Every time I died I’d have to start the game all over again. Still, I have to applaud the audacity of making such a challenging section in a game mostly played by kids. I think I could’ve done it if I had been more persistent back then. I could’ve been the king of the playground with bragging rights like that. I was more interesting in playing a lot of games, however, than getting good at just a few. Some things never change.

 

Double Dragon is a game that I both really like and really don’t like. It starts out as a very good brawler but fades as it goes along. I am a little unsure why it became such a cultural phenomenon, but it probably has something to do with the martial arts boom of the 80s. Now I know that is was also a popular arcade game that was multi-player and had more advanced graphics, but it’s the NES version that almost everyone played. Since I have such mixed feelings it is going to go right in the middle of my rankings. I am putting it right below that old favorite Metro Cross. It’s a game that belongs in every NES collection, but it’s also one that’s only good for short bursts. Hey at least it’s always fun watching Abobo slide off that conveyor belt and into oblivion.

NES quality percentage: 7/12 = 58.33%

 

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. The Legend of Zelda

3. Galaga

4. Donkey Kong

5. Exodus: Ultima III

6. Pac-Mania

7. Wrecking Crew

8. Super Pac-Man

9. Pac-Man

10. Viva Pinata

11. Dragon View

12. Excitebike

13. Drakkhen

14. Arc the Lad

15. Clu Clu Land

16. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

17. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

18. Metro-Cross

19. Double Dragon

20. Ice Climber

21. Gaplus

22. Dragon Spirit

23. Pinball (NES)

24. Ninja Golf

25. Super Soccer

26. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

27. Red Sea Crossing

28. Baraduke

29. Tennis

30. Hogan’s Alley

31. Gamma-Attack

32. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

33. Galaxian

34. Evoland

35. Cosmic Commuter

36. Hot Pixel

37. PocketBike Racer

38. Wild Gunman

39. Defunct

40. Gyruss (2600)

41. Looney Tunes Racing

42. Squidlit

43. Baseball

44. Birthday Mania

45. Bad Street Brawler

46. Burly Men at Sea

47. X-Men (HyperScan)

48. My Name is Mayo

49. Marvel Heroes

50. Ben 10

NES #11: The Legend of Zelda

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

US Release Date: 7-14-87

 

(While not invaluable anymore, the maps are somewhat expensive)

It’s interesting playing The Legend of Zelda again in 2020 and noticing just how many elements of the game are things that get complained about in other games. It’s an obtuse game filled with cryptic clues with little direction. You never really know what to do next, and you have to check just about every square inch of it just to make sure you find everything. It has terribly unbalanced fighting with monsters usually taking either one hit or several, and the monsters just sort of wander aimlessly. It can best be described as “hit them before they randomly hit you.” Any other game like this on NES would have endless snarky YouTube videos devoted to how bad it is. So why is The Legend of Zelda such a classic? It all comes down to execution.

(Even the title screen looks fun!)

The Legend of Zelda is a game that looks and sounds great right from the start. Its an atmosphere that instantly draws in the player. I still think that when NES games done right are timeless, and I don’t think it’s only because I first played them as a child. Hyrule is a fun place to be even if it is so sparsely populated. Seriously, why does Ganon care so much about a world almost entirely inhabited by old hermits living under trees? It’s one of those games where every screen looks like it is hiding and important secret, and a very high percentage of them are. It’s also too hard to fault the cryptic nature of the game because it came out during a time where mysterious adventure games were much more popular. People liked to be challenged, especially when there were only about thirty games to chose from. You have to imagine being a gamer in the summer of 1987 and seeing the limited NES library and thinking about the horror of actually running out of games to play. You would want something that would keep you busy for a while. I still remember being young and having everyone in my family who played games figuring out little pieces of it until we were able to put the whole puzzle together. I think it was our second game right after Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt.

(It was like a living cartoon. No wonder it got me addicted to gaming)
 

Of course flaws are still flaws even in a great game, and Zelda does have some. It has many of the problems that plague other mid-80s games that make it a bit harder to play today. It’s similar to Metroid in that whenever you die you always start back with only three hearts of life no matter how many  you have collected. That means finding a fairy soon or quickly dying. You also start back on the same screen after dying in the overworld no matter where you are on the map. This leads to some frustration early in the game when the world is wide open but you don’t have many hearts. At least your rupees stay accumulated after death, because grinding for them can be a bit of a pain. For some reason I find the combat in dungeons to be fun but overworld combat to be more annoying than anything. Most of the monsters do sort of just walk into you and there is almost no tactical element to it whatsoever. Even most of the bosses are too simple simple. They also run out half way through and start recycling. Adding two extra dodongos doesn’t really change the stakes very much other than making it more frustrating to run out of bombs. There’s a reason why most games we think of as Zelda clones usually borrow more from Zelda 2 and A Link to the Past. This game is rough around the edges.

 

(I loved having to bomb walls to find secrets and always kinda hated when they started adding cracks to give them away.)

Still I had a much better time playing this game than I expected, especially considering how many times I have played through it. It’s also the first game that I wrote about on my old blog to get written about again. This time around I was much more enthusiastic about it. I don’t know if it was my mood or if the other games I have been playing recently made me appreciate it even more. And of course even though I don’t rank games based on importance it’s really hard to overstate how important this game is, especially in the United States. American audiences never really took to the more-advanced-than-Atari consoles, and while there were certainly advanced games coming out on computers at the time that was still a niche market. By the time the NES was getting popular in America it already had the big three: Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda. These three games were among the first new games that people had played since the Atari era. There aren’t a lot of console proto-Zeldas out there. Imagine going straight from Pac-Man to Zelda. It’s hard to even fathom such a radical change today. Games change their size and scope, but not so much their goals. The Legend of Zelda more than any other game solidified the concept of beating a game as the main goal. Even Mario could be played for a high score, but Zelda with its battery save and mysterious world was played to be won, and the gaming world never really went back.

So The Legend of Zelda is a great game, but one that is flawed enough to only be second on the list. I had a hard time putting it over Galaga, but it’s just more fun for longer periods of time. Galaga would be wearing pretty thin after an hour of play, but The Legend of Zelda would still be fun thanks to the variety. I’m just warning you now, however, that it’s not going to stay the highest rated Zelda game, and the ones that go higher on the list probably aren’t the ones you’re thinking about. So I just want to take this moment to enjoy the brief time where most of my audience is still going to agree with me.

NES quality percentage: 6/11 or 54.54%

The Ironclad List of Correctness:

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. The Legend of Zelda

3. Galaga

4. Donkey Kong

5. Exodus: Ultima III

6. Pac-Mania

7. Wrecking Crew

8. Super Pac-Man

9. Pac-Man

10. Viva Pinata

11. Dragon View

12. Excitebike

13. Drakkhen

14. Arc the Lad

15. Clu Clu Land

16. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

17. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

18. Metro-Cross

19. Ice Climber

20. Gaplus

21. Dragon Spirit

22. Pinball (NES)

23. Ninja Golf

24. Super Soccer

25. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

26. Red Sea Crossing

27. Baraduke

28. Tennis

29. Hogan’s Alley

30. Gamma-Attack

31. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

32. Galaxian

33. Evoland

34. Cosmic Commuter

35. Hot Pixel

36. PocketBike Racer

37. Wild Gunman

38. Defunct

39. Gyruss (2600)

40. Looney Tunes Racing

41. Squidlit

42. Baseball

43. Birthday Mania

44. Bad Street Brawler

45. Burly Men at Sea

46. X-Men (HyperScan)

47. My Name is Mayo

48. Marvel Heroes

49. Ben 10

Xbox 360 #2: PocketBike Racer

Developer: Blitz Games

Publisher: King Games

Release Date: 11-19-06

(I wonder if people are still playing this online)

Since I got a whopping one view on my last 360 post I figured I would cover an even less significant game on the same console. I suppose that means it’s time to cover the Burger King trilogy. In case you don’t remember, way back in 2006 Burger King ran a promotion where they offered three Xbox (regular and 360) games which could be purchased along with a value meal for four dollars. Fast food and video games are a natural pairing, so it actually sounded like a good idea. Even though the games themselves were all ages they were obviously courting the “adult male who wants their own Happy Meal” market. How can I tell they were going for men instead of women? Well this is a racing game starring a goofy costumed mascot but they still managed to put Playboy model Brooke Burke prominently on the center of the cover. Hey you gotta remind your public that the beautiful people eat burgers too. So is the game a quality product made with care by the developers, or is it a quickie cash grab made to sell burgers with minimal effort? Well this is American capitalism we’re talking about here. Of course it’s cynical and lazy.

 

At first the game shows signs of effort. The menu screen shows three difficulty levels with four different modes of play each. Hey that’s twelve contests! That’s a lot of programming oh wait they all use the same tracks. Yeah the game only has five tracks that have to be raced over and over. This might be more forgivable if the tracks themselves were better, but it has three okay ones and two very annoying ones. Unsurprisingly the flatter and more traditional tracks are the better ones. The backyard and construction site tracks are full of ramps and sharp turns which are more infuriating than anything. There’s nothing worse than having a good race only to get stuck on a partially overturned fence and having no way to get off of it. Games should not have leaning fences to get stuck on. That does not make the game more challenging, just more infuriating. Then the construction site is full of jumps and pitfalls that are very hard to miss even after a dozen races. It’s just so poorly put together that ramps pop before you can build up enough speed to properly jump them. Luckily the AI is programmed in such an aggressive way that they will fight with each other instead of  racing meaning that different racers will place differently each time. Even on the most difficult setting I only had to come in first on a couple races to guarantee a victory.

 

(I hope you like getting stuck!)

However I will concede that I did enjoy it at times. I liked that they had to fill out their roster of racers despite not having many memorable characters. This leads to commercial b-listers like Subservient Chicken and Whopper Jr. showing up. There’s always going to be some fun to be had by playing as a guy wearing a giant burger costume. The racing is also decent before it gets tedious. Before the realization set in that there were only five tracks I thought I might actually enjoy the whole experience. All the racers drive the same but at least the bikes are different so there is a little strategy involved with picking the right bike for the right situation. I had to try a few different strategies before I could finish the 150cc races which would usually be a good thing, but by that time I was so sick of the same tracks that I put the game down and didn’t get around to finishing it until a year later. I will give it some extra points for at least being a moderate challenge however.

 

(This level is what I dream about when I am trying to lose weight)

Just to show you how much I have to dislike a game to put it into the red section I am actually going to move this into the purple. I thought it was going to be red when I started writing, but even with only five tracks it’s less repetitive than Wild Gunman, and it had clearer goals too. Still it was only moderately amusing so it’s only going to 35th on the list. Of course since it was only a couple of dollars to begin with just sort of okay is a victory. Now I need to review the other two Burger King games so my journey through the least significant X-Box games can continue.

 

X-Box 360 quality percentage: 1/2 or 50%

 

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Wrecking Crew

7. Super Pac-Man

8. Pac-Man

9. Viva Pinata

10. Dragon View

11. Excitebike

12. Drakkhen

13. Arc the Lad

14. Clu Clu Land

15. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

16. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

17. Metro-Cross

18. Ice Climber

19. Gaplus

20. Dragon Spirit

21. Pinball (NES)

22. Ninja Golf

23. Super Soccer

24. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

25. Red Sea Crossing

26. Baraduke

27. Tennis

28. Hogan’s Alley

29. Gamma-Attack

30. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

31. Galaxian

32. Evoland

33. Cosmic Commuter

34. Hot Pixel

35. PocketBike Racer

36. Wild Gunman

37. Defunct

38. Gyruss (2600)

39. Looney Tunes Racing

40. Squidlit

41. Baseball

42. Birthday Mania

43. Bad Street Brawler

44. Burly Men at Sea

45. X-Men (HyperScan)

46. My Name is Mayo

47. Marvel Heroes

48. Ben 10