Category Archives: I Remember
I Remember: Fester’s Quest.
I remember two distinct things about Fester’s Quest. The first being surprised that Sunsoft actually slapped its label on such a broken game and the second being how frustrated I was playing the damn thing. Fester’s quest could have actually been a decent game, following in the footsteps of Blaster Master with the overhead sections in that game. Rather then improving upon the mechanics in those sections though, Fester’s Quest makes them worse.
There were a few points in Blaster Master that enemies seemingly wouldn’t die no matter how many shots your put into them. Increase those amount of hit points times three in Fester’s Quest and you have one of the biggest issues in the game. Almost every enemy in the game won’t go down easily! Worse yet, gun upgrades get gimped half the time with bullets that either miss the enemies completely due to odd patterns or because the shots are hitting the wall next to you. These two elements are enough to break the game by itself, but there are more broken aspects thrown in at random just to jab the knife into the player even more.
So while the revisit of this game was barely worth my time, I wisely used a Game Genie to power through it quickly to see if there were any elements of the game worth experiencing. Honestly, there was nothing very redeeming about the game at all. More so, it seems the difficulty may have been purposely raised in order to make up for the fact that the game is very short. Throw this game under the “bad translation from a form of media to video game” category, because it fits in VERY well.
I Remember: Double Dragon (NES)
Double Dragon was the 3rd NES game I played, following Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. It was also the first video game my father rented for me from a video store that was located next to our local K-Mart in town. For whatever reason, as much as I knew the title of the game was Double Dragon, I thought it was a game based on the Karate Kid movies! Daniel-san’s girlfriend got nabbed, so it was time for him to kick some ass! Keep in mind, I was 5 years old at the time, so this game could have been based off Thundercats for all I knew.
Seeing this title screen makes me start humming the Double Dragon theme song.
For what its worth, Double Dragon on the NES isn’t exactly the best port of the arcade hit. Due to the fact that the NES couldn’t reproduce everything its arcade cabinet brother had to offer, Technos had to change things up a bit. One of these changes is the inclusion of an experience based system that would allow you to perform more devastating moves based on each level you gained. While it’s a neat implementation, I often found myself getting the crap kicked out of me because my enemies had some of these skills right from the start. The other major change was that two player co-op play was non existent in this version. Instead the only two player option was a one on one fighter featuring a variety of characters from the game. While my younger brother and I often played this two player option very often, we longed to take on the main quest together.
Billy Lee swings for the fences in Mission 2.
I always appreciated the variety of locations in this game. From city streets, industrial areas and woods with intricate cave systems, the game gave a memorable presentation. The music that played during each level was diverse and fit each stage to a tee. One of my personal favorites being the track from Mission 2. While getting to point A and to point B really just meant kicking the crap out of everyone in front of me until the stage ended, the developers did add a few platforming elements to the game to mix things up. Unfortunately, they often just ended up frustrating me to no end when I was kid. Replaying it now, the jumps don’t seem as bad as they did back then, though they can still be very unforgiving; screw up once and you lose a life!
The platforming elements of the game frustrated me to no end when I was a kid.
While the Sega Master System version of Double Dragon will always be my favorite, the NES version is where I got my first experience at side scrolling beat’em ups and from this I would eventually go on to play other title in the genre like Streets of Rage, Final Fight and the Rushing Beat series. While the changes to this port of the game are certainly not perfect, its still worth checking out!
Flashback to 1989 for this guide.
Before I ever saw an issue of Nintendo Power, my dad picked me up this Nintendo strategies guide by the editors of Consumer Guide. I loved it!
This guide was the sole reason I had any sort of direction in Castlevania 2: Simon Quest and I ended up beating the game because of this guide as well! I recently found a copy at the Midwest Gaming Classic for 2 bucks and absolutely got hit by a wave of nostalgia opening it up.
My dad paid $3.97 for this back in 1989. How do I know? This one had the K-Mart price sticker still on it! #retrogames
Thanks for helping me beat Castlevania 2, dad!
Following the Bloodlines of Castlevania on the Genesis.
My childhood experiences with Castlevania: Bloodlines is pretty limited, mostly due to the fact that I was on the Nintendo side of the 16 bit wars. That didn’t stop me from occasionally swapping systems with friends from time to time to see what exactly Genesis could do better then my beloved Super Nintendo. On one of those occasions, I rented Bloodlines and was a little taken back by it, especially considering what a graphical power house Super Castlevania IV was. It certainly had it interesting points, like having two different characters to select from the start; but for whatever reason the game didn’t really impress me back then. Maybe I rented some other games along with it, but my memories of playing it back then become pretty faded at that point.
A decade or so later, my taste in games and consoles matured and I didn’t give a damn what system a game was on; as long as it was good. Doing so allowed me to revisit various games that I either never experienced before or didn’t give a fair chance and Bloodlines is one of those titles I revisited. Playing it again, I realized that the game is certainly worthy of the Castlevania name and provided plenty of challenge for me. I then kicked myself later for being so closed off from wanting to experience other consoles in my younger age. What a shame!
This weekend, I took the opportunity to fire it up again and beat the game as Vampire Killer wielding Johnathan Morris. After a few hours of playing, I became victorious! On normal mode, it least…
Retro Mags: PC Gamer
I was extremely happy to acquire a copy of an old PC Gamer issue from June of 1996? Why? This was the first PC gaming magazine I was exposed to by my friend Girard who was an avid PC guy. I remember him telling me “Mike, it’s great! It covers all the latest games and comes with a CD-ROM loaded with Shareware/Demos!” He started naming off the demos: Strife, Rebel Assault, Afterlife and tons more, this was stuff that you couldn’t download because it was simply just too damn big to download off a 28.8 modem! My friend gave me that issue, shortly after he was finished reading it and I was hooked. I went out to the newsstand and bought the next issue, then spent hours enjoying the demos on the CD! This magazine put the final nail in the coffin for my Nintendo Power subscription as I was already getting sucked into PC Gaming at this point anyway with my shiny Packard Bell, Pentium 100 computer. Yes, PC Gamer magazine was my new found companion into the PC gaming phenomenon.
Browsing through this issue, I’m flooded with a ton of memories of PC games I forgot. The articles in this magazine where well written and the reviews still hold up by today’s standards. Reading this reminds me of what I was doing with my free time in 1996: being a 14 year old teenager. I followed the magazine for the next few years after that, but stopped reading it due to my increasing interest in music production. Sadly, I threw my collection of them away back in 2002 when I moved in with my girlfriend. (now wife.)
Finally, reading this also reminds me that I eventually separated from my friend that gave me the magazine because I didn’t agree with the poor choices that he was making and didn’t want to be associated with them. Hopefully, he’s doing alright today.
This article was originally posted on the Gamer Logic Facebook Page on 9/05/2013.