NES #25: Puss in Boots: Pero's Great Adventure

Developer: Shouei System

Publisher: Electro Brain

Release Date: June 1990

 This game reminds me of my old gaming adage: If a game has the word great in the title it is probably bad. Luckily Puss in Boots beats the trend by being not completely worthless. It’s just not one that particularly stands out. It’s most notable for staring the mascot of Toei animation, the makers of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z. It has no other connection to Toei besides the character though, so it’s a very minor footnote in the company’s history. This is a game that was always around, but I never bothered to play it. It came out just in time for my first summer vacation, but I wasn’t quite renting games yet. I played it as an adult after hearing that it was easy. Luckily, it is more challenging than people give it credit for. There is some challenge to be found.

(Well, it's not exactly the whole world, but at least he goes to Space Wars.)

 Puss in Boots reminds me of an Alex Kidd game in that almost every level plays differently. In some you are on foot, in some you are underwater, in some you are in a plane etc. It also has Alex Kidd’s love of weird enemies. The first level has blobs and killer horseshoes while the flying levels have lightning bolts despite the sky being sunny. Many of the more humanoid enemies attack in odd machines. It does add some much-needed flavor to the game. It is much needed because despite the game being a world tour of sorts the levels are not all that interesting. Half of the levels are either underwater or in the sky making for nothing but blue backgrounds. Other levels take place in buildings which could be anywhere. The around the world theme really isn’t utilized very well.

(I hate doors you can't go into)

 The most intriguing aspect of the game is its difficulty. It’s a game that’s both very easy and very hard. Most of the levels are short making it a quick play through. We’re talking fifteen minutes from start to finish. This makes it sound like a cakewalk, but in true NES fashion it’s not quite as it seems. The game only has three continues so failure is an option. While the first half of the game is pretty easy it gets hard near the end. The last level almost has Castlevania difficulty. It’s a confusing maze with plenty of traps and hazards. Right before the final boss there is a difficult mini-boss and a hallway of fire. It all culminates with one of the harder boss fights on the console. It’s one nobody talks about, but I had more trouble with Count Gruemon than I did with almost any boss from a more famously difficult game. So, it’s one of those games that is short, but takes a few tries to beat. I still don’t know how I beat that boss. It just happened one time.

(Despite the potential, most of the levels look more like this)

 So here we have yet another NES game for the okay section. It plays alright but it just doesn’t stand out in a field of vastly superior platformers. It’s my third NES game in a row to miss the good column, but of course I’m picking out what games to review so I guess that’s on me. I am learning that ranking every game regardless of console makes for some weirdness. Right at the bottom of the green section I have some obscure but decent Atari 2600 games. I already decided Puss in Boots was only okay when I played it, so it can’t go above them. Of course, I definitely see myself playing Entombed and Red Sea Crossing in the future, but the quality is about the same and I doubt many people would rank them that way. So, we have a new top purple game. Puss in Boots edges out Baraduke to become the new most okay game in history. Congratulations!

 

NES Quality Percentage: 13/25 or 52% 

(images are from mobygames.com)

NES #24: Cliffhanger

Developer: Spidersoft Software

Publisher: Sony Imagesoft

Release Date: November 1993

(This game is a good opportunity to practice your bad Stallone impression)

 Cliffhanger, based the cheesy Sylvester Stallone action movie, is a game that doesn’t make a very good first impression. I know I thought it was lame when my cousin rented it way back in the day. It looks ugly for one thing, especially for such a late release. It came out just in time for the NES’s next-to-last Christmas. By then they should’ve known how to push the limits and make a great looking game. Kirby’s Adventure came out just a few months earlier, and it’s a visual masterpiece. Also, there is a bit of a learning curve. I spent more time on the first level than I did on the whole rest of the game, and it really requires reading the instructions. Also, it’s almost universally panned. The old All Game Guide gave it one star. That puts it right down with the worst games of all time. However, I have to say it really grew on me. I wouldn’t call it a particularly good game, but it was one I still had some fun with.

(I wish I could go in the cabin and watch tv)

 I think what I enjoyed most was the kooky level design. It’s called Cliffhanger, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the game was full of death-defying jumps. Early in the game you collect a pair of boots that allows you to run, and this makes for some wild jumping. There were many times where I thought I couldn’t make a jump only to find out that I just barely could. There was something surprisingly exhilarating about it. Of course, it would’ve been better if you didn’t have to press up and the direction to run and having to find the boots is an unnecessary step, but it almost gave me Prince of Persia vibes at time. The levels usually had an upper and lower path, so jumping from above was relatively safe. It may be ugly, but the level design wasn’t terrible. There were also a couple other parts that really amused me. One of them is where you punch a henchman onto a spiked cliff and ride his dead body like a sled. It’s one of my favorite weird NES moments. The other part is having the whole plot of the movie condensed into text with some still photos. It made it seem like Cliffhanger the Little Golden Book. Also, now I don’t have to watch the movie which is another plus. As I said, it’s a bit kooky.

 Of course, I don’t want to oversell it. The mere fact that it was fun at all was a complete surprise, but there are plenty of flaws. The combat is especially awkward. Stallone’s punch doesn’t do very much damage and is somewhat difficult to use. Sometimes I would fight a henchman and he would go down in a couple of punches and sometimes he would drain half my health while I helplessly punched away. There are weapons to collect, but they are very limited and hard to use. I died multiple times trying to get a knife which I thought would be a permanent upgrade like the boots only to find out that it was a single-use item that wasn’t even very good. Most of the weapons move too slow to be much help. It’s best to just avoid enemies. That’s never a good sign. There are also times where damage is unavoidable. Stallone has to climb up some cliffs with falling rocks. The rocks are completely random and almost impossible to avoid. I just ignored them since they didn’t slow my progress and appeared before a cutscene where I would get my health restored. With improved combat and more refinement this could’ve been a hidden gem. I guess they figured it was an NES game in 1993. Who really cared anymore?

(There's that scary jump I was talking about)

 After I learned how to play the game ended up being fairly easy. It’s one of those short, easy games which was good for a rental, but not really necessary for ownership. I’d love to know who got this game for Christmas in 1993. Of course, we got Rocky and Bullwinkle that year so there were worse gifts out there. I did enjoy this game somewhat, but objectively I can tell that it’s not that good. Still, I am going to put it in the purple section instead of the red, and it’s ending up in the middle of my NES rankings instead of near the bottom. It’s a good result for such a maligned game. It comes in at #58 splitting a couple of mediocre RPGs. I’m probably the only person on planet Earth who would rank it above Evoland, but that game just didn’t do much for me. Perhaps it needed more dead body sleds. Then again, what game doesn’t?

 

NES Quality Percentage: 13/24 or 54.16%

(Images are from mobygames.com)

NES 

1. Zelda II 

2. The Legend of Zelda 

3. Super Mario Bros. 2 

4. Wrecking Crew 

5. Excitebike 

6. Clu Clu Land 

7. Balloon Fight 

8. Double Dragon 

9. Panic Restaurant 

10. Felix the Cat 

11. Donkey Kong 3 

12. Ice Climber 

13. Pinball 

14. Cliffhanger 

15. Tennis 

16. Renegade 

17. Hogan’s Alley 

18. Wild Gunman 

19. Mario’s Time Machine 

20. Baseball 

21. Home Alone 

22. Bad Street Brawler 

23. Wayne’s World 

24. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends 

 

Game Boy Advance #3: Care Bears: Care Quest

Developer: Sirius Games A/S

Publisher: American Game Factory

Release Date: 11-15-05

  

Okay look, I’ve got almost a thousand GBA games to cover, and they’re not going to all be Pokémon and Advance Wars. Most of them are going to be more like Care Bears: Care Quest. At least I get to talk about my weird obsession with Care Bears when I was in high school. Somehow, I got really into watching reruns of Care Bears on late night Disney Channel, and I carried this over into my school identity. The strangest part is that this, and my other obscure interests, only made me more popular and influential. Actually, if this game had come out a few years earlier I might’ve bought it. Luckily, it came out in 2005 when I was obsessed with something else and didn’t have to pay for it. I mostly blocked 2005 from my memories though so I can’t tell you what I was in to then. So anyway, Care Bears!

 You mostly get two types of kid games on GBA: platformers and mini game compilations. This one is mini games, so at least it’s a little bit different than the Cabbage Patch Kids game I just played. It has twelve different games to choose from of varying degrees of quality and difficulty. The game keeps track of high scores, so there is some replay value which is nice. It would keep a child busy for more than a half hour. I was surprised how difficult couple of the games were, especially the final one called “When Dreams Come True.” It has you collecting toys to match the Bears on the side of the screen. The challenge is that the toys are random and if the Bears wait too long, they will wander off. So many times, I collected the right toy just to have it become the wrong toy before I could turn it in. I also enjoyed the more platform-based levels like the Lemmings-inspired level where I had to build rainbow bridges to help various characters get over obstacles. The game at least has a little meat on its bones.  

 

Of course, a few of the games came up short. The matching game was too easy, but it was the first game so maybe this was intentional. The worst of the bunch is handball tennis. It moved incredibly slow and had very little strategy. I also don’t care for the graphics much. Why do the bears have squished noses that look like pig snouts? Also, most of the graphics consist of clouds and rainbows. This is logical for a Care Bears game I suppose but it doesn’t make for very interesting graphics. There’s so much adorable stuff the developers could’ve put in it. Instead, it’s all very generic.

 I know I sound like I enjoyed it, and I did in a way, but it still doesn’t rate particularly high. It’s still a lazy licensed game without much substance or craftsmanship. It gets out of the red but doesn’t get very high in the purple “ok” column. I haven’t had a purple game in a while, so it’s kind of exciting. I liked it better than Wild Gunman, but I’d rather race with Pocketbike Racer again. The developer of the game, Sirius A/S, only made a handful of games. They made two mafia games for PC and four GBA kid games. I may go check out their other GBA games and see how they are. How many kid games do you feel like reading about? On second thought don’t tell me. Perhaps it’s better if I just assume the answer, is infinity.

(images are from mobygames.com)

Game Boy Advance #2: Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots

Developer: Full Fat Productions

Publisher: Destination Software

Release Date: 10-2-06

 

Well, here we have it folks, the worst game ever released on a major console. I know I’ve said that before, but what could be worse than this? The game that previously vied for the title of worst game not on Hyperscan was The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. To compare it to Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots think of it this way. Take the most boring thirty seconds of the game and put it on a loop. Play this loop for thirty minutes. It now plays like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Rocky and Bullwinkle is bad, but at least the levels are different. Bullwinkle doesn’t climb up a set of stairs only to find the same set of stairs waiting for him in the next screen. Playing Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots is like being punished by a Greek God. I brought the mortals fire and now I am doomed to fight the same battle in the exact same way for all eternity. Or at least for a half hour or so.

Get ready for some rocking and socking

 Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots is, of course, based on the classic boxing toy that debuted in 1964 and can still be found in stores today. You’d think Mattel would be happy being able to sell a sixty-year-old toy that lost all of its cultural relevance in the Watergate era, but for them it wasn’t enough. No, they had to branch out. They just had to have that Game Boy Advance game. Hey, every other half-forgotten toy and cartoon had a GBA game. It is a 2D fighter which already puts it slightly behind the 3D toy. Sure, they try to expand things, but they fail in every way. The characters aren’t connected to poles like in the original game which would seem to allow free movement, but there’s not much moving in this game. That would be asking too much. They also expand the roster by not just having red and blue, but several other colored robots as well. It sounds like it might work out, but I have never played a fighting game where the character made less of a difference. They all play exactly the same with the only real difference being their defeat animation, and if you are playing a one player game it won’t matter because you’ll never lose anyway.

 It’s not only that I never lost. It was never even close. Without even moving out of the way of a punch I never lost more than a fifth of my health. Now I have played more than my share of impossible to lose games in my time. I’ve played educational games for children. I’ve played ten-minute visual novels. I’ve played toy simulators. However, I have never felt less challenged than I did playing Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Even worse is that the game wants to be challenging. It just utterly fails. I know it’s cliche, but did someone play test this game? Did they not notice that it’s completely broken? Or did nobody care?

 

The main problem is that every opponent fights the exact same way. They do a few quick punches and then start doing nothing but charge attacks. If you do any move that’s faster than a charge attack you will hit them every single time. They will rarely do anything else but stand there charging. I played by holding forward while punching which did a medium punch. Each round I had to punch the opponent exactly five times. Every single fight versus every single opponent it was the exact same thing. Take a couple of initial punches and then punch them five times. No fight except maybe the first couple lasted longer than ten seconds. There were a lot of fights too. I wasn’t counting but I think every playthrough was six fights and then you would unlock another robot. The game wasn’t actually over until all the robots were unlocked. I’d say it was about thirty or forty fights in all. The fights never got more difficult though, and I kept fighting the same robots over and over. I’m not sure how they decided which robots were in which fights but it feels very random. New fighters are mixed with old fighters, and nothing makes sense. Of course, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably not surprised.

 

But wait, that’s not all. It also fails with the overall presentation. It’s one of the ugliest GBA games I have played. The only things that change from fight to fight are the backgrounds, and they are far from evocative. I never felt like I was playing in a different level, just the same one with the subtlest of changes. They could’ve at least changed the color of the ring. It could’ve broken the monotony a little. Even things that start out mildly amusing get old fast. I liked the dumb quips by the robots and the different ways they lose their heads. However, these things never change, so I got tired of them very fast. It’s what happens when you fight the same few robots over and over again. It is pure tedium.

 

Oh, and I almost forgot about the most annoying part. When the enemy’s health bar gets down to zero the fight’s not over. Instead of mercifully ending the match you have to instead alternate L and R as fast as you can until it fills up your energy bar so you can deliver the death blow. Since fights only last ten seconds you’re going to be tapping L and R constantly. And this is on Game Boy Advance. It’s not the steadiest of platforms. So, if you want a shaky game that gives you carpal tunnel syndrome than I have the game for you.

 

So yeah, this one’s bad. I almost want to make up a new color for this game and Ben 10 because they really are in a level all their own. After playing this Bad Street Brawler feels like a romp. Wayne’s World feels like Mega Man 2 in the presence of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. My only hope is that I will never rank a game lower than this one, and when I have 1000 games ranked it will still be 999. There can’t be any worse professionally released games out there. Don’t make me dust off my Jaguar to prove it. This is the non-Hyperscan bottom of the barrel. If you decide to play it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 

Game Boy Advance Quality Percentage: 0/2 or 0%

Images are from mobygames.com