Thursday, December 25, 2025

NES Game Reviews #42: Galactic Crusader & Galaga are stuck in the Gargoyle's Galaxy Gauntlet 2.


 Merry Christmas to the loving readers of my blog! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! ALL THAT JUNK! This might be the last post before the new year. I am nine posts away from 500 posts and well I need to watch a tv show all the way through and have to watch 70 episodes or around there of this show. It might even be more, I really don't know. Anyway I think it's good to give yourself breaks from time to time. So I decided to give portnoyd his CHRISTMAS GIFT and poop out another NES game Reviews blog post for him to comment on and we can argue and just have a good time. This set is a pretty interesting set of games so I can't wait to get into them!


Well my God it's time again to tear a video game a new asshole. Recently I've been too nice and well they haven't really been giving me games worth ripping the asshole out of. Galactic Crusader is a Sachen game and the only Sachen games that ever made it to America were bought by Bunch Games to shove onto the NES and I think this was the only one. I guess portnoyd will tell me. Don't get angry at me Sachen weirdos who aren't even reading this website, you had literal decades of time to prove to the rest of the NES world that they popped up here in such insane quantities that meant people should collect them. You don't think shitters like John Riggs, MetalJesusSucks and Pat the NES Jerk wouldn't have made a big deal about it if they had found them. I don't even know why I brought them up, I just wanted to sass them. The jerks. Uh, where was I. Oh yeah this game is barely playable garbage. There are sections where the enemies don't even shoot at you and then BLAM you get shot and wonder where the fuck the thing came from. Everything about this game is stupid and ugly and I hate it. I think Bunch Games made the worst games in the Color Dreams/Bunch Games/Wisdom Tree trifecta. I wish I knew more about why they made three different companies but oh well. Maybe portnoyd knows. I am tired of talking about this game and wish to do it no more.


Galaga is based on the Arcade game also named Galaga. It's about you shooting alien jerks until they are dead. This is a very simple easy to get into game and you know sometimes that's all one needs. Sure it's great that the NES had a lot of games that went very in depth but sometimes you just got 20 minutes to play a game and not 8 hours. All you want to do is shoot some aliens to kill some time because a tv show you like is coming on and you don't want to watch the show before it. That was a big deal back in the NES/SNES/Genesis days. We had no internet or streaming to find something else to watch or do for 20 minutes. This does that incredibly well. You turn it on and enjoy that twenty minutes of shooting aliens and the thing is, if you really get into it and hell I can tell you I've gotten really into arcade type games you can easily play it for way too long and miss your show and freak out because you didn't tape it. This game can get very addictive like most well done arcade ports. I don't think Chubby Cherub was an actual port but it tried to do arcade action and it failed miserably. Every Bandai game i've covered since is a masterpiece compared to that shit. Yet it somehow got considered rare and hard to find. I refuse to believe Chubby Cherub is a rarity and you should too.



The first time I played this game I was not a fan. I was not a fan of the controls and therefore just threw it off and forgot about it. I don't know why I came back to it, I guess because I was trying to beat games but I did and finally got used to the controls just to find otu that this game was hard as hell. It took me years t oget used to how you play this game and to even beat it, the thing is this game is absolutely worth getting used too and playing. This is an amazing racing game and is probably my favorite on the NES. The levels get pretty varied and what you can do with your car ends up being pretty amazing. Galaxy 5000 is sadly still pretty underappreciated even in our HIDJEN JERMS youtube video era. You'd think someone would make a video on this. It deserves it. The music is great and it's a very worth while game to play. One point of advice is to find out where the hidden stuff is and ALWAYS go for it. You will need that hidden shit to beat this wild ass beast of a racing game. 


Gargoyles Quest I is a game I want to get really good at but I still cannot beat the first stage. It was a game I got as a kid. I actually believe that somehow everyone with a Gameboy for any amount of time somehow found themselves with a copy of that game. It's really weird too because the NES sequel and the SNES sequel are both pretty uncommon, but you'll find a copy of the first game ANYWHERE you look. I'm sure more copies of Gargoyles Quest I were created than I dunno copies of the Bible. Still weirdly enough you never hear anyone talk about that one. It's always the two sequels and mostly because RARE I LOVE THE RARITY WOO MONEY RARITY THIS WILL BE AN INVESTMENT WOO I AM A MANCHILD WHO REFUSES TO LOOK INTO STOCKS. WOO. The thing is I like Gargoyles Quest II and Demon's Crest more than the original game (sorry Damien). Something about he original game just beats my ass into a corner and makes me cry. Anyway here's another HOT TAKE: Gargoyles Quest >>>>>>>>>> Ghost N Goblins where Firebrand came from if I recall correctly. These games are all really great. Gargoyles Quest II has great music, great graphics for the time, very well created levels, all kinds of neat upgrades and is just an incredibly fun video game to play.  Demon's Crest is also pretty awesome. All Gargoyles Quest games need to be in your collection if you actually still collect things and they really should make a new one but with NES style graphics. GET ON IT CAPCOM I KNOW YOU WANNA DO IT.


Ah we come back to Tengen, an incredible company. They used to be able to make games for the NES but something happened and they had to go unlicensed. They were the best Unlicensed game company for this reason. I don't know the reason why they had to go underground but they did. Anyway for this reason there is a licensed and unlicensed NES game and no I'm not doing the joke of reviewing both this time portnoyd. I already have more than 500 damn games to review not to mention that I'm thinking of reviewing Pal/Aus/whatever exclusives because they had some cool shit too. Gauntlet is a video game that I like a decent amount despite being amazingly horrible at. Gauntlet goes on for 100 stages of you just trashing motherfucking demons and gremlins and shit. Just wrecking the hell out of their assholes. You have to stock up on finding food and saving health and so getting through 100 stages is damn hard. I have never done it but Gauntlet is on my list of games I'd like to beat.


Gauntlet II is also on that list, even though I'm not sure it even has an actual ending and is one of those never ending games. It just starts looping at a certain point. Anyway Gauntlet II is well more of the same. The Graphics and sound have been cleared up a bit and some other things work a little differently but really it's still no real difference in entertainment value than the first game. It does have 4 player action which means you can use the Nintendo Four Score and beat this game with a bunch of friends. The lady warrior was way sexier on the cover of the original game tho. Just saying. Anyway, I'm done for now. I gotta watch a lot of a tv show!

GOOD GAMES: 125

BAD GAMES: 84

OKAY GAMES / HAVEN'T AGED WELL: 29

GAMES IMPATIENT WHATEVER: 3

4 comments:

  1. I love me some Gargoyle's Quest 1 Claw but you are 100% right here, the sequel and Demon's Crest are indeed superior. The first one is good, especially considering it's like a first/second wave GB game, but it's brutally hard and I could see that keeping people from seeking out the sequels.

    Also hard agree that the Gargoyle's Quest series is better than GnG, the series that spawned it.

    Other fun fact, Firebrand aka Red Arremer is also the final boss of the unreleased NES prototype game Makai Island. Which is cool and good and they should have released it here, it got a Japan release. They probably didn't let the USA have it because it's an incredibly obtuse game and downright unbeatable without a guide. I think I streamed that for Cavern years ago but everyone probably forgot about that.

    I want to like Gauntlet but it turns out I don't. Beating it would be something but I can't take 100 stages of Warrior Needs Food Badly.

    Tetris is literally what made Tengen go underground.

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    1. Woah a damien comment!

      I would really like to play Gargoyles Quest IV if you could get back some of the original guys who did the other ones.

      wasn't that for the NES BOUNTY

      yeah 100 levels is wild, although i do believe there are a lot of warps to help with that.

      I had a feeling Tetris was the reason. Nintendo are jerks who smell.

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  2. Thank you for the Xmas gift, claw.

    AKKSHULLY, they are responsible for TAGIN DRAGON and MISSION COBRA coming stateside. My understanding is Bunch Games was a desperate bid from Color Dreams to "start fresh" which didn't work out because they still kept selling "COMPLETE GERBAGE". But yes, this game is hot ass.

    The NES was like, the last system to truly embrace SCORE games. Remember those? Games like Galaga were a rare breed on the SNES/Genesis and nonexistent after. Like you said about pick up and play, score games are the best for that. See how far you can go and how much you can score and then move on. Better times.

    You should check out Galaga '88 or Galaga '90 on the TG16. Excellent sequels-ishs.

    Chubby Cherub is a console game only surprisingly. It's Japanese name is like Q-Taro Waka Waka Panic or something. Probably based on anime because every fucking Japanese only game apparently is.

    As far as rarity, it's fucking common. The problem is for whatever reason, the supply of boxes got sat on a few hundred times so any one that was in good condition got ridiuclous money and then why not, the shitty ones too. Again, this game is NOT HARD TO FIND. AT ALL.

    Galaxy 5000 is GOOD and FUN. I am glad you like it. It gets hard at the end, I got close as a kid.

    I have yet to play any of the Gargoyle's Quest games despite owning all 3. Go me. I can't even comment on them for that reason but they have a good reputation for a reason. I'm surprised Capcom hasn't milked them into a collection like you said OH LOOK HERE IT COMES FROM LIMITED RUN GAMES. :(

    I will give you a pass on identical licensed/unlicensed games but you are required to do Tengen Pacman/Ms Pacman and Namco Pacman/Ms Pacman. OR ELSE. (what else is tbd)

    Gauntlet and Gauntlet 2 are fun games and good concepts but fuck beating them. They really go on too long. 100 levels? Sorry, no. But they are the kind of games we lived for with BARBARIANS, HOT BABES AND WIZARDS on the cover. So it gets a pass on being too long. The arcade cabinet is really awesome too.

    Makai Island is good and fun when I watch Damien play it. He may have done it for the bounty when I added FC games or just for funsies. I should sit down and play it too but EHH TOO LAZY.

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  3. Play the Gargoyles Quest games or I will ban you from my blog!

    ReplyDelete

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