NES Game Reviews #56: Karnov, Kickle, The Karate Kid and the Karate Champ fight in the Jurassic Park. For some reason.

 Well now. I went for a Kickle Cubicle ad for the top image of this post. I picked it for one reason really, because it's my favorite game within this group. I am glad I picked it becuase this ad is amazing. I mean it's amazingly BAD but that's still amazing. Look at the character they picked for Kickle. He looks more like SPIDER MAN than the character you actually play or is on the box. That character looks like some kind of kid of some sort. Or a dwarf. I don't know. We also get the terrible joke of no more mr ICE guy and if you know me I love terrible forced puns like that. Anyway I did not even look to see what the ads for the other games even looked like because I knew they would not beat this beauty.

 

We finally finish off the J's. The terror of the H-I-J's is finally over. K is a overall a pretty good letter. Most of the games are well pretty interesting to at least talk about and not like Hoops or Jeopardy. I'm glad I picked the idea of just reviewing all Jeopardy games in one paragraph becuase doing four reviews of them would have been really pointless and it would have me smashing random letters at the final game. I should do that for a really awful game. Just jam my fingers on the keyboard until a paragraph of gibberish pops out. Anyway, I will not be doing that for this game which is really fucking amazing because it's made by Ocean. That's right Ocean made two games that were actually pretty good on the ol' NES (The other one is Addams Family). If you know me you know I hate Ocean more than LJN or THQ or any (except Micronics. Fuck you Toshi) company that made games for the NES. Just something about their games annoys me. I think it's the fact they took two really good licences away from better companies like Konami or Sunsoft or Capcom or Tecmo or Taito or KID or whatever. Just imagine a GOOD RoboCop 2 (RIP Tom Noonan) or a GOOD Darkman game. Annoys the hell outta me. The fact that I actually like some LJN and THQ games is more. Anyway they did a pretty good job here with Jurassic Park and weirdly enough like Addams Family it doesn't feel like a EuroTrash game. They should have made more games without a the stink of Europe all over them. So this is a game wher you go around and pick up dinosaurs eggs. You have a big area to go around and find stuff. The areas get bigger and bigger and all that. The only problems I had with this game are this. Sometimes you'd just get stuck on something and dinosaurs would fuck you up and sometimes you'd just miss one egg because you didn't realize you could go over to that area. Sometimes the timer got to be a little annoying but never so bad that I got pissed off. I dunno but  I did beat this game and would probably do it again. It's worthy of being put in the Good pile. Good job Ocean you didn't fuck this one up.

 

  The Karate Champ is a terrible ugly stupid awful game. It is a terrible port of what I feel was probably not very good of a arcade game. I get the feeling that it was one of those things you just played while at a grocery store because you didn't want to follow your mother. It was like the one other thing you could do while waiting for your mother or parents or whatever buy oranges or some shit. This game has the worst controls of all time and you get really very little to do. I like a good amount of the simplistic arcade ports for the NES. Something about them are usually well done. This is not one of them. This game is a boring ugly mess. The play controls, graphics and music are just so awful. I know I did not play this game until I became a collector and if I was given this for Christmas in like 1991 I probably would have puked on whoever got it for me. No one wants that. There's also very very little same to about this stupid shit game.

 

I am a big fan of the four Karate Kid films made between like 1984 and sometime in the 1990s. Yes, I know the third movie and fourth movie get some poop thrown at them but I dunno I find them to be a fun series of movies. The first one is clearly the best but I believe this was a game that took stuff from the first two movies and made into a game. So if you like Terry Long or Michael Ironside you are shit outta luck and get nothing. You start in the Karate Tournament and this shit is really quite easy. Then you do some levels which are really annoying. You got a bunch of bad guys just chasing you and a LOT of them. If you get hit you get go backwards and get knocked into a hole. Despite all of this you can easily beat this game within 15 minutes. You just probably won't enjoy it. I do kinda like the mini games where you catch flies or break ice even if I'm not very good at them. I believe ATLUS somehow was the company that made this game for LJN but I could be wrong. Anyway no matter who made this game its pretty shitty. I do like the goofy wink Mr Miyagi gives you when you win the game in the end. Thanks for believing in me Mr Miyagi!!!

 This game reminds me of Play the NES, the last NES forum that had a sizable userbase. It was run by a man named Roth and he loved this game. He also did a dumb edit that would change some word to KARNOV which I fucking hated. DROVE MY ASS OVER THE MOON with that shitty garbage. I hated it so fucking much that along with not liking several of the forum letters made me kinda not use PLAY THE NES FORUMS. This is where I asked PAT THE NES PUNK my VERY SERIOUS QUESTIONS that he did not answer. Pat the NES Punk, more like PAT THE NES JERK WHO TAKES STUFF WAY TOO SERIOUSLY. Seriously. What a bunch of shit garbage. Port, one of the users on this site was SMUGGIER and MORE UP HIS OWN ASS than Loogaroo if you can believe it. It was pretty wild. So what do I think about Karnov? I fucking hate Karnov. I don't know when I picked it up but it was very early on. The game is just awkward. Karnov moves slow enough thats its annoying. You get two hits and the enemies (some of which are very annoying) are just put in the worst places possible. Also enemies will just randomly pop in and annoy the shit out of you. This is a game I want to beat because I HATE IT AND WANT TO MAKE IT MY BITCH not because I actually enjoy it. Data East was such a weird company and I really do not like this game. Sorry, Roth. Not that you'll ever read this.

 This is a pretty great little game created by KID for Taito. Strange how I never hear it get talked about as much as THE OTHER TAITO GAMES that are SUPPOSEDLY SUPER RARE (and they aren't. Not even Little Samson. Seriously will you come across this game back in the day if you were to EBAY things when EBAY was an actual source and not GIANT GOOBER SHITHOLE for collecting games. Yes, honestly pretty easily too. Would you find this game if you were looking for it via flea markets and places like that. Yes. You totally would. It wouldn't happen every visit BUT This is a game I found in Newfoundland. In fact I remember finding several copies. Sorry but you must realize that makes this game uncommon at best. Rarity means your game comes up on ebay like once every 3 years. Like Stadium Events would back in the day. I'm not saying Stadium Events isn't rare but I honestly do believe there are more copies out there that poeple trying to make 20k on it are loonies but not as looney as anyone who spends money on it. Yes, yes I'll get to Kickmaster in a second. You know that I've made it a thing the shit on new collectors whenever a supposedly rare game comes up. So yeah, how about the actual game? If this were normal era prices of like I dunno 1998 to 2007 then I'd say yes, spend that $20 on this UNCOMMON NES game. This is very much worth $20. You will play it and enjoy yourself. You get all kinds of different magic and all kinds of amazingly cool bosses to fight. The levels are pretty well designed and the graphics and music are all worth it. The only problem is that the last stage is WILD and you WILL need a lot of magic power to use it which you will have depleted within the last stages. Still if this were NORMAL LAND aka BEFORE 2011 I'd be like yeah spend $20 on that game you deserve it! If you spend $140 on this game I will however have to break my foot off in your ass and I don't want to do that, mostly because my foot will be not connected to my body and be in your STUPID FUCKING WORTHLESS SHOULDNT HAVE ANY MONEY ASS. Way to ruin collecting you SHIT FUCKING ASSHOLES.

 

 I will never get NEW AGE COLLECTORS because I looked up this game and it only goes for like $25 bucks. This was no joke are harder game for me to find than Kickmaster which I saw many times after I spent $20 on it. Remember that feeling of looking everywhere for something and when you got it everyone else popped out copies that were ALWAYS cheaper than the price you paid. It was like they were just waiting to make a damn fool out of you. Anyway Kickle Cubicle is a game that I would see more than once but less than I ever saw Kickmaster. There was this one guy who I think was still a teenager when he started selling NES games in like 2007? I dunno. I really am not good with them. I seriously wake up sometimes and still think it's 1998 until I realize I am an adult and then I just cry a little bit. Uh, yeah. This guy went around and found SO many games. He had Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers 2 at one point. He had a LOT of NES games. Like if he collected them he probably would have beaten my collection and had all the games. Except Stadium Events. I doubt that shit even came to Canada. It's just weird because this just feels more RARE to me than Kickmaster. I dunno, maybe it's just better when you didn't have 394240 dudbes buying up everything to then resell. I dunno. I can't get too angry at resellers even if they did help ruin this shit. It's just that kid was also a reseller. So Kickle Cubicle is a really great little game by Irem. It had some fantastic music and graphics and the puzzles are fun. You have to use your ablitily to make ice blocks to find your past obstacles to get to the end. Simple Lolo like stuff that ends not so simple. It does feel like a good progression. I enjoyed playing this game when I finally got a copy. I think the bosses are fun and entertaining and the game was worth buying. The price was less than $25 too but am I wrong in feeling this game should be a bit more than that in todays CRAZY FUCK WHAT THE HELL PRICES? 

GOOD GAMES: 150

BAD GAMES: 121 

OKAY GAMES: 47

GAMES IMPATIENT: 5

GAMES OVERALL:   323