NES Game Reviews #36: All of the E's At Once, Baby (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love Elevator Action)

 

Remember when the NES Classic came out. In 2016. I do. I thought it was neat but I did not buy it as I already had a NES and access to those games. Portnoyd probably bought sixteen as portnoyd is a giant whore for Nintendo. If any person at Nintendo asked him to open up his asshole he would. He would let them all fuck him in the booty. Portnoyd please stop simping so hard for Nintendo. STOP BUYING 82030 AMIBOS NO ONE NEEDS THEM. YOU KNOW YOU DON'T NEED THEM. STOP IT. STOPITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. Uh, yeah, I figured since for whatever reason I don't want to talk about the next Final Episode (seriously in my queue half way finished just sitting there) I figured let's talk about all six games that start with E on the NES. Yep, only six games started with the letter E on the NES, which is pretty weird but hey at least you can talk about them all in one go! Neat-o!

Toshi Takahari, the Micronics man is my nemesis. I hate him and all the games he made. I also had to make up his name because no one knows who he is. I want to find out so I can punch his 70 year old face in. I hate the games he made. So bad. Worse thing is they could be good games if some better company had made them. The worst thing is when he comes out and makes something that isn't complete horse shit. Yes, I'm going to say something that I will never forgive myself for. Toshi did a good job with this game. It's very dated even by 1987 standards (because it originally came out two years prior in 1987) yet this is a pretty enjoyable arcade like game. Maybe that's where he should have stayed. Anything more than shoot dude, grab thing and escape was too much for ol' Toshi to handle, however Portnoyd will go SONSON IS AMAZING AND I LOVE IT and I don't think that games too much fun. Maybe someone else made the game and he took the credit for it. I'm going to go with that. Fuck you, Toshi.

Racing games were pretty interesting on the NES. They were either pretty enjoyable or just not. It's weird but I like the simpler racing games (like Rad Racer) and I would consider this one of the simpler racing games. You race in some nice looking levels that gets harder and harder. This is a pretty fair challenge in the end though. It's just a racing game, this time with boats. I do like the goofy cartoony graphics for all the people you go up against. Each and every one of them look like they would be a lot to deal with. I just think the racing part works well here, it controls well and again the levels just look nice. Anyway, I have to say one thing here and this might be the WORST box art I've seen on the NES. Holy shit it's so garish and ugly to look at. Just all kinds of colors that just do not look nice together and a random boat in the middle. Just so ugly. Also every copy of the game the word Eliminator is misspelt on the top label. Good jobs, goobers. Still this is a simple but fun racing game and one of my favorites for the NES. 

I think I have mentioned it before on this blog but I am not really a big fan of Star Wars. I really enjoy the original trilogy because it felt special but besides that the only thing I like from the franchise are the kinda janky as hell games for the NES and the SNES. That's it. I do enjoy getting to play as Luke Skywalker and using all these force powers. The graphics are on par with the original NES game but I might like them a bit more. The music/sound is good. It seems to be a pretty faithful recreation of the movie, not that I really care very much because it's more important to be a fun game than feel like you are playing the movie. The only problem this game really has is that the jumping is weird and annoying. It takes a lot to just do a simple jump correctly. Which is really annoying in a game where you have to do a lot of jumping. Still I can't say I hate this game. I would probably still have played the Return of the Jedi NES game. Still a downgrade from the original NES game.

Oh hey another NES sports game, but this time is about Tennis. I think they made two Tennis games for the NES. I really do not know. Again I do not know how to play Tennis. I really don't know. I'm sorry. I do like the fact you can play with three other people, which is pretty rare for NES games. I like that Asmik made it. I have a weird thing with their little dinosaur mascot guy. I had his Gameboy game as a kid, I guess because I liked the Dino guy and my GOD that game was impossible to me as a child and I could not get past even the second stage. I do kinda want to go back and play it again though. Anyway Until just now this was one of the few games that I had never played before, I played some of it and was completely confused as what I had to do. I'm going to go ahead and put it in the good games section because I get the feeling that if you know Tennis this will be a fun Tennis video game. I'm the worst person to be reviewing Sports games. Seriously.

Sometimes going for broke is admirable. Just putting every single thing you can think of into a video game. Give the player a lot of things to do. However sometimes the exact opposite is also good. Sometimes that works perfectly. Excitebike is a black box game. It is VERY SIMPLE, like well every Black Box game that wasn't Super Mario Brothers. This is a simple game, yet it is incredibly fun. You drive a bike up and down hills trying to break a score for how fast you can do it. However you will end up spending so much time learning the eccentrics of this very simple little game. It actually gets quite hard near the end is pretty amazing. There's really nothing too much to say about this game. It's simple but you'll get hooked, which is pretty amazing for what a forty two year old video game?

This game was made by Wisdom Tree. The bible game people. It was taken from Crystal Mines and fiddled around with. I think they fix up the game and change levels so that it's a bit better than Crystal Mines. However is it weird for me to think the levels in this game are like too big? and having to shoot things to uncover things you need to get the exit to appear is kind of annoying. Anyway it's a decent enough game that I will beat one day. The best Color Dream/Wisdom Tree/Bunch Games games are the ones where you do not have to jump. The jumping controls in all of those games are so, so bad.

GOOD GAMES: 98

BAD GAMES: 77

OKAY GAMES: 28 

GAMES YOU MIGHT LIKE IF YOU AREN'T IMPATIENT: 3