NES #5: Clu Clu Land

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: October 18, 1985

This is just the type of game I was hoping to find when I started this blog. It’s one I’ve had for many years and overloooked in a flood of more famous games that I bought around the same time. It’s a game that’s barely remembered today but is at least significant as a launch title on the NES. Nintendo had four very popular arcade games when they were launching their console. Oddly though none of them were released initially. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Popeye, and Mario Bros. had to wait until the national launch a year or so later. It’s interesting that they decided to forgo releasing their most famous games at launch. Perhaps they were worried about overexposure as all three of those games had been ported, and some of them very poorly, for other systems. Donkey Kong got bad to mediocre ports on just about every console and might’ve been too much of a symbol for the 1983 video game crash. It could also just be that the games weren’t ready yet. I don’t know the exact reason, but they decided to go with games that would be less familiar to American players. That paved the way for fun oddities like Clu Clu Land.

There really aren’t too many games out there like Clu Clu land so I hope my description does it justice. It’s a single screen arcade game where you play as Bubbles the balloonfish making her the first female protagonist on launch day. The screen is covered in pegs and your goal is to uncover pictures made of gold bars that look like rupees from Zelda. To uncover the pictures you have to swim between the pegs. Bubbles is constantly swimming in a straight line so the way to move her in a different direction is to use the control pad to grab on to a peg and swing her around. There are also deadly sea urchins and portals to watch out for but luckily her shots are infinite. I sure am glad it’s not just a couple shots because the whole game would then be running from monsters. Anyway that’s the basics of the game so yes it is as strange as its name.

It is a bit complicated for an arcade game and takes a bit of getting used to, but once I learned how to play I had a lot of fun with it. Seriously, this is a fun classic arcade game. It’s constantly exciting and has a great learning curve. I like that the pictures actually rotate in the levels so you can’t just memorize the puzzles and play the same game every time. That first level might be a smiley face or it might be a boat so you have to actually explore to figure it out. This is unusual for an era that was all about repetition. Still the more I played the better I got and I had fun every time. It never felt tedious or repetitious even though the five screens repeat over and over. That’s no easy feat in a classic arcade game. I also like how it shows off its age by having generic pictures to uncover. If it had been made just a couple years later it would be filled with stars, mushrooms, and other bits of Mario iconography. It takes us back to a time before it was all Mario and Mushroom Kingdom. It’s fun and a history lesson at the same time. My favorite kind of game!

I love how they work the obstacles into the pictures

If you were shopping on day one than this would’ve been an excellent choice to test out the new Nintendo controller. Before Nintendo, home video game controllers typically had a joystick and either one button or way too many buttons. Nintendo went with a functional minimalist approach and Clu Clu Land really shows off what it could do. I can’t imagine having to be so precise in an Atari or Intellivision game. I would miss so many pegs. With the Nintendo controller, however, new levels of gaming were now possible. So I am going to rate this one probably higher than anyone ever has before, but Clu Clu Land has earned its time in the spotlight. I am putting it right below Excitebike at #8. It breaks my heart a little to knock Metro-Cross out of the top 10, but that’s the hazards of ranking games. Maybe I’ll move Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX down a couple of spots and nobody will notice. Anyway, if you can find Clu Clu land for a good price you should pick it up. It’s a true classic arcade hidden gem.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Excitebike

8. Clu Clu Land

9. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

10. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

11. Metro-Cross

12. Gaplus

13. Dragon Spirit

14. Pinball (NES)

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

16. Red Sea Crossing

17. Baraduke

18. Gamma-Attack

19. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

20. Galaxian

21. Evoland

22. Defunct

23. Gyruss (2600)

24. Looney Tunes Racing

25. Squidlit

26. Baseball

27. Birthday Mania

28. Bad Street Brawler

NES #4: Baseball

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Release Date: October 18, 1985

Even this makes me miss real baseball

I talked about Baseball a little bit in my Excitebike post. I described it as being two years old in 1985 and showing its age. Honestly now that I have played it some more I think I was being a little generous. This was one of the first games released by Nintendo on the Famicom but really it plays even older than that. It feels like a slightly updated version of Atari’s 70s baseball game Home Run. It gives you about as little control over the action as you could possibly have and still call it a baseball game. The whole time I played I felt like the manager of the saddest and slowest minor league team. Imagine a single-A affiliate comprised of nothing but catchers and you get the idea. 

The word baseball made out of baseballs! Now that's basebally!

The game starts up with a nice title screen which gives the false impression that this is going to be a quality title. The first sign that something is wrong starts to set in quick however as the only options are a single one player game and a single two player game. There is no season or playoff mode of any kind to be found. The teams are represented by single letters which supposedly represent some of the real teams. It doesn’t matter though because none of the players have names, stats, or positions. This makes pitching completely random because there’s no way to pitch to an individual player’s weakness. It’s not like you can throw off speed pitches to the power hitters and fastballs to the weak contact hitters. You just have to pick a random pitch and hope for the best. The fielding is computerized so I hope you enjoy watching your shortstop miss easy grounders and then chase the ball halfway up the outfield. That’s not exactly Allen Trammell and Brooks Robinson out there. 

Of course with the focus being completely on hitting and pitching this could lead to some pleasant arcade action, but it’s a little too slow to be very thrilling. I suppose I shouldn’t expect too much speed from a 1983 game, but earlier baseball titles had worse graphics and speedier play so I’m not sure if it’s a reasonable trade off. I could see it being more fun in two player mode since its limitations would work for both players. I don’t remember playing this one with my brother, but we had fun playing all the lousy Sega Master System sports games together, so we probably would’ve had fun with this one too. Still, the NES launch was full of two player games so it’s not like you had to get Baseball if you wanted to play with your buddy. 

All in all this game was a major disappointment. I am a huge fan of baseball and baseball video games so I was hoping for some old school fun. It’s just too slow, too limited, and too frustrating to be any fun. I know some people like this one, and I get that. Nostalgia can be a powerful influence. I never played this one as a kid though and I can objectively say that it’s not very good. I am going to put it just above Bad Street Brawler because it has a potentially fun two player mode. It’s the first disappointing launch title, but we still have several generically named sports titles to go. I hope at least one of them is fun to play. It’s all even again with NES games being 2-2.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Excitebike

8. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

9. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

10. Metro-Cross

11. Gaplus

12. Dragon Spirit

13. Pinball (NES)

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

15. Red Sea Crossing

16. Baraduke

17. Gamma-Attack

18. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

19. Galaxian

20. Evoland

21. Defunct

22. Gyruss (2600)

23. Looney Tunes Racing

24. Squidlit

25. Baseball

26. Birthday Mania

27. Bad Street Brawler

NES #3: Pinball

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: October 18, 1985

These black box games really do make good t-shirts

Pinball on NES isn’t a particularly important game, but it did give us one innovation. It introduced the console world to the Mario cameo. Now I know that he is on the cover, but that was mostly for marketing purposes. He only appears in the bonus game saving Pauline one last time before he got too busy with Princess Peach. It is a fun number matching bonus game which isn’t too hard to get to, but it rarely lasts more than a few seconds. It’s like if he was the cover star of Punch-Out even though he only appears as the referee. Still, Nintendo knew they had a mascot on their hands so they started sneaking him into any game they could. It’s a trend that continues to this day. 

The top half of the game

Pinball was a game that I loved as a kid. I remember staying up all night with my cousin playing it. We rented it so much that when the video store was paring down their games we bought the rental copy and it is still in my collection today. As a launch title it makes sense because Pinball has wide appeal and the thought of playing it at home any time without having to go to a noisy arcade or downtown dive is always tempting. The only problem with it is that the game was already almost two years old by the time it made it stateside and it was starting to show its age. It’s a fairly fun game, but it could certainly use a bit more excitement.

The bottom half of the game

The actual machine in the game features two screens and a bonus game which makes it more in depth than the typical early 80s pinball video game. I like that the goals are pretty clear. You hit targets, you bounce off bumpers, you try to turn all the cards over in the middle of the screen. It’s about as low frills as a pinball game could be. This is also the main problem with the game. It’s about as laid back as a game can be. There’s no music except during the intro and the sound effects are sparse. It doesn’t really have the bells and whistles of a typical pinball machine. It could also use some better bonuses. It’s not easy getting all the drop targets on the bottom screen, but the payoff is only an exit on the side back to the plunger that goes away if your ball goes down the side lanes. It’s a pointless bonus that goes away when your ball is in a position to use it. All getting the royal flush does is change the table’s color and put a bumper between the flippers. A real pinball machine would give you a big bonus for that or at least have some flashing lights. It’s a game that if you’ve played it for thirty minutes you’ve seen just about everything. Even the disappearing flippers are more of an annoyance than anything else.

In spite of it’s flaws, however, I am still going to put this in the good column. There is something to be said for a game that is so relaxing. It’s one of the great cool down games on the NES. In game A the ball moves nice and slow, and I love to get my score higher and higher while hitting the familiar ramps and targets. It does have decent replay value too, and if I had bought this in 1985 I would’ve felt like it was worth the money. I know that’s modest praise, but Pinball is a game of modest pleasures and that makes it worth playing. There are only six pinball games on the NES and I am curious to see how it stacks up against the others. It probably won’t be near the top, but it’s a decent launch title.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Excitebike

8. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

9. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

10. Metro-Cross

11. Gaplus

12. Dragon Spirit

13. Pinball (NES)

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

15. Red Sea Crossing

16. Baraduke

17. Gamma-Attack

18. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

19. Galaxian

20. Evoland

21. Defunct

22. Gyruss (2600)

23. Looney Tunes Racing

24. Squidlit

25. Birthday Mania

26. Bad Street Brawler

NES #2: Excitebike

Developed & Published by Nintendo
Release Date: October 18, 1985

(Our first entry in the underappreciated programmable series)

The Nintendo Entertainment System entered the US market at a time when game consoles were practically dead. In 1983 the market was saturated with over a half dozen consoles cranking out games at a breakneck pace. By 1985, however, it was all gone. The Atari 2600 only had three new games in 1985 with one of them, Q*Bert’s Qubes, seeing a very limited release. The only other still active console, the Intellivison, had already been disowned by Mattel and had gone to mostly mail order. It looked like consumers didn’t want game consoles anymore. So when Nintendo decided to market their console in America they had to sneak in through the back door. They had a soft launch in New York in the fall of 1985 and didn’t go nationwide for almost another year. Because of this most of the games we probably think of as launch titles were actually released later. Early classics like Metroid and Kid Icarus were released almost a year after launch. Probably most shockingly was that although there were three games featuring Mario, there was no Super Mario Bros. Just try to think of a time when there was an NES but no Super Mario Bros. It’s hard to do, isn’t it? So what did get released back in November 1985? Well it was mostly odd arcade games and sports titles that were not necessarily new. Baseball was already two years old and it showed. Excitebike is one of the few that has stood the test of time. Why has this simple motorcycle game been so endearing?

(The starting screen of my childhood)

Excitebike works because it has an engaging simplicity. A side-scrolling racer with only five tracks doesn’t sound that exciting, but it’s all in the execution. Actually calling it a racer isn’t exactly accurate because while there are other cyclists out there you are facing a tougher opponent, yourself. Every track has a preset time to beat, and it’s all about finding a way to get through the race faster. With almost two dozen obstacles to chose from this can be challenging. Much of the tension comes from jumping and landing. You really have to learn how to position your bike after jumps to get good speed. This becomes even more difficult with other racers clogging up the lanes. They love to congregate around the engine cooling arrows and they just keep on coming. Engine temperature is another wrinkle this game has to make it more challenging. You can either hold down A and race at a slower speed without the threat of overheating or hold down B and race faster but with a quickly heating engine. For such a simple game it has quite a bit of strategy. 

(Pure racing goodness! I love how they show the best time in the background)

Of course the meat of the game is its fondly remembered track editor mode. It couldn’t be much simpler. The track moves to designated areas where you pick out obstacles and jumps. It’s fun because there are different ways to go about making a track. You can design one for speed or skill. Of course if you’re like me you alternate between jumps and those giant platforms that always make you crash. Then maybe put in those potholes that slow you down. Then maybe zigzags of speed bumps. I’m sorry I’m a bit of a masochist when it comes to Excitebike tracks. The track editor really give the game personality which was still a fairly new concept in gaming and what Nintendo would quickly become known for.

So Excitebike is actually going to go fairly high on my list. It’s right there in a clump of cartoony racing games. I agonized about if I was going to put it above Metro-Cross, and I did because the track editor and selectable tracks gives it a bit more replay value. Then I bumped it up even a couple more spots because I thought about it too long. It’s an impressive little game for 1985. I’ll probably be proven wrong, I can’t think of a better console racer that came out earlier. It certainly showed that while the NES might not be ready for prime time it sure had potential. It was just the game to tide us over until 1986.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Excitebike

8. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

9. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

10. Metro-Cross

11. Gaplus

12. Dragon Spirit

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

14. Red Sea Crossing

15. Baraduke

16. Gamma-Attack

17. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

18. Galaxian

19. Evoland

20. Defunct

21. Gyruss (2600)

22. Looney Tunes Racing

23. Squidlit

24. Birthday Mania

25. Bad Street Brawler