Leveling Down

Maybe some of you readers aren’t old enough to remember the good old NES gaming days, when we had to play with controllers larger than our own heads! (Kidding of course)

cmfl3x and I have been busy as of late, so we haven’t had much time to have gaming discussions or put out features but we did agree on writing up a list of NES games we each fondly remembered from the NES. My list is the first part today, and cmfl3x will contribute his in the near future. Instead of just naming every title I loved when I was a kid, I decided to stick to titles that seem to have disappeared off the map and need to be remembered. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure if this list of titles holds up by today’s standards, but I do recall enjoying them a lot when I was a kid. Some of the games have indeed gotten a remake or so here and there, but for the most part these are games that I wish were brought back in some form or another into today’s gaming generation. Read on for a trip down memory lane with my list of titles I miss…

In no particular order:

Crystalis
What happened to this game? It was one of the most enjoyable action RPG titles on the NES, and it actually had an interesting storyline too: the player awakes from a cryogenic sleep in a post-apocolyptic war. Of course, I don’t quite recall how the player is still wielding a sword in a post-apocolyptic war instead of a firearm, but I guess we should just roll with it. In any case, the game played similarly to Zelda but with more in-depth RPG leveling mechanics through an experience point system.

River City Ransom
I considered putting Double Dragon on this list, but with River City Ransom already being here, I felt it was no longer necessary as River City Ransom is perhaps the pinnacle of side scrolling beat-em-ups. To this day I’m sad that Technos never continued with River City Ransom sequels, but instead used the character designs for soccer games and dodgeball games. River City Ransom was awesome because it took the fun of a normal beat-em-up like Final Fight, but put it in a schoolboy setting where characters like jocks would should “Barf” as you beat them up. And most importantly, the game added a monetary system where “killed” enemies would drop money that you could use to buy food to fill up health as well as books and magazines to read and unlock new special moves. It was a perfect blend of beat-em-up and RPG, and it even had 2 player co-op. Maybe it’s no longer relevant with Castle Crashers out today, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for it.

Blaster Master
I actually was pretty young when I played this game, so I can’t remember the details behind it so well but I do remember enjoying it. I think half of the game was 2D where you were a boy driving a vehicle through adventure/platforming elements but then you’d eventually park your vehicle to go into dungeons where it would switch to sort of a top down, Zelda-like view. It had a pretty interesting premise and while I don’t remember specifics, I do remember the cheat where if you throw the bomb on any of the bosses, you can rapidly hit the pause button to inflict massive damage on it since every time you unpause and repause, it would count as another bomb hit.

Wizards & Warriors (series)
This was one of the series that Acclaim published on the NES that I actually loved, even though the cover of the second game sported Fabio. But since the trilogy on the NES, nothing else was heard from this game. Did you know that the original game was developed by Rare, of Perfect Dark & Golden Eye fame? I just learned that when doing some research on this series. Anyway, I enjoyed this series a lot because it was a fantasy/adventure 2D platformer, where you went through worlds unlocking treasures, getting new weapons, and all that. In a time where Mario ruled the system, it was nice to play a different type of 2D game that was more about adventure than platforming.

Duck Tales (series)
Can you believe that during the NES days, Disney games were actually good? This was because they were actually developed by Capcom, so you can imagine what happens when the studio behind games like Mega Man and Street Fighter decide to make an all new adventure but with licensed characters. Duck Tales was quite the solid adventure game, and very in-line with the source material since you played as Scrooge McDuck and you traveled the world looking for treasure. I fondly remember using Scrooge’s cane to jump as a pogo stick over enemies – such charming gameplay! While the cartoon’s relevance has long died, the desire for me to play games of that level of quality still remains. In a way, Henry Hatsworth has carried on the torch a bit, but Scrooge McDuck was the original old treasure hunter…

StarTropics
I never played the sequel as I think I moved onto the Super NES by then, but I did enjoy the first one a lot. It played similarly to the original Legend of Zelda, but the setting was a series of tropical islands and the protagonist was a boy with a strong yo-yo. He traveled through underground dungeons not unlike those of Zelda, and while I guess Zelda games are still present today, none of them have that tropical feel that StarTropics did.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
While Zelda is still very relevant today, I want to make mention of Zelda II specifically as it was a very different game than the rest of the series. Most Zelda games started top down like Zelda 1 and Link to the Past on the Super NES, and eventually became 3D with Ocarina of Time onwards. But none of them had the amount of RPG depth that Zelda II had. Zelda II actually had villages you had to go visit and there were random encounters, new moves and abilities to learn, leveling up, etc. It was pretty much the closest a Zelda game could ever get to being an RPG, and while it was definitely no walk in the park for me as a kid back then, I respect it now as a game that was radically different from the rest of the series but still quite enjoyable in its own way. These days, all we get in Zelda games are heart containers and finding one new hookshot or bow in each dungeon – not much innovation.

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