Showing posts with label nes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nes. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (1987) - Nintendo Entertainment System


This one has been a long time coming.

First off, readers of the site might - if you try reaaaaally hard - remember that I wrote a review for the original Castlevania during Halloween... 2014. Pretty much right after I wrote that piece, I actually had designs to play its sequel and the years just kept flying by without me devoting the time.

Here we are five years later and I've finally done it!

Now, that's not all. If you'll take a quick trip back in time with me for moment, you'll see a young RyHo, sitting in front of a dusty old Nintendo Entertainment System in a cabin near a lake. It's summer and it's nighttime. After spending the day swimming it's time to find something to while away the long, hot night.

The young lad's cousin has an assortment of games that he's never played before. One of them is Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. With no manual to aid and a cousin who knows next to nothing about the game, the youth tries and tries again, but can't make heads nor tails of how to even play this title. It's not like the Castlevania game he's used to, but all the spooky monsters and bright vibrant colours keep him absolutely enthralled.

That was my first attempt at playing Simon's Quest, circa 1990 or so. This game has been a monkey on my back for approximately 30-effing-years.


This feels good.

I played the game on the new Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which released in May of this year in conjunction with developer Konami's 50th anniversary, alongside two other collections: Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection and Contra Anniversary Collection.

I've had the thing on the NES Classic since 2016, though, and I could've picked it up on just about any Nintendo Virtual Console since 2007, so I have no excuses. Not to mention the fact that copies of the game fall out of NES collector's pockets constantly there's so many of them around.

Be that as it may, I took the plunge and made Castlevania II part of my Halloween 2019 celebrations and I'm so happy I did!

Most people think of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as the first of the Castlevania "Metroidvania" titles, but the fact is that it all started with... Vampire Killer?

Oh, you never heard of that one? It's considered an alternative version of the original game, which released in Japan and Europe for MSX2 PCs. It landed on European shelves before the series made it to the US and would receive its branding under the "Castlevania" title.


Simon's Quest is the second Castlevania game of this style, which hit shelves in Japan in 1987 and in the US in 1988. That said, since most people don't even know Vampire Killer exists, many would consider this as their first open-world CV game.

All of the classic elements are there: an open, non-linear environment for the player to traverse and new weapons and upgrades that can unlock previously unreachable areas of the map. The player is just plunked in the middle of a town with no idea which direction to traverse and they must speak with the villagers to gain clues on where their adventure should take them.

The game brings back the hero of the original title, Simon Belmont, who after having defeated Dracula has found out that the Master of Darkness managed to place a curse on him before his demise. In order to remove the curse, Simon must find the five parts of Dracula (I dunno what the townsfolk did to the dude after the first game, but shit got dark), which are holed up in five different mansions around Transylvania, and resurrect the monster... so he can kill his blood-suckin' ass again!

As I mentioned, you can go anywhere you want in the game - no levels here- but in true Metroidvania style certain enemies will be too tough to deal with unless you've completed a certain area, retrieved a new item, or upgraded Simon's strengths.


Simon still has his trusty whip to aide him in his quest, which you can upgrade throughout the game thanks to finding hidden gypsies. Yes that says gypsies and I don't mean like kinda hidden. Whoever developed this game doesn't like you and didn't want you to complete it.

This is among a handful of titles for the NES that I usually refer to as the "Nintendo Power sellers", because they garnered subscriptions to the famous magazine like Evians in the desert. Not only are many of the required items and clues hidden in the most devious of places, even if you have all the right pieces to the puzzle the game requires you do the strangest things to progress.

Like, if you have the Blue Cystal, which you need to magically drain a river at the beginning of the game, what would you think? You'd equip it in the menu and hop in, right?

WRONG!

You'd equip it and kneel next to the water for several seconds until the game revealed the hidden path.

This kind of stuff cropped up in The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, as well. I'm sure it was all a scheme of sorts. You should see my conspiracy board sometime!

So, if you can find the right path, get the right items, figure out all the crazy hidden secrets, survive the mansions, and defeat Death and Lady Camilla, you can take on your old pal, Drac and say bye bye to that curse!

Provided you finish your quest in under 8 "video" days. If not, you die anyway. Yeah, that's what we used to call "Nintendo hard" back in the day, kids!


Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the "day and night" mechanic, which is surprising, because it will drive you mad as you enjoy this perfectly wonderful game! Every night at 6PM in the game, which by the way you don't have a handy pocket watch or anything so you have no idea when, the game flips you into night. It pretty well just means that the colours get spookier and the enemies get harder, ya know, in case you weren't having enough troubles as it was.


All in all, Simon's Quest is a great game that I wish I had just tasked myself with completing a long time ago. Although I came of age with Symphony of the Night, which is certainly a much more playable Metroidvania, there's a lot to enjoy here. The only issue I would take from the game is the repetition.

They reuse a lot of enemy sprites and the music isn't very varied. I remedied the music problem by listening to Dino Drac's Halloween Jukebox (I can't promise if that link will work after October 31st or not), which I couldn't recommend enough, by the way! As for the enemies, they spice things up by giving them outlandish different colour palettes and I just can't get mad at a game that lets me fight nuclear green skeletons.


Once you get into the groove of deciphering all the crazy stuff the townspeople say and you figure out the trick to finding pretty much all the secrets (just throw Holy Water everywhere... that's it. That's the trick) you'll realize how much fun you're actually having. Just make sure you have that copy of Nintendo Power handy - you know, the one with the beheaded Dracula on the cover (how did they sell this thing to kids?) - and you'll be right as rain!


Like I said, there's no lack of ways to get your hands on Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, but I couldn't recommend the Castlevania Anniversary Collection enough, which is loaded with other awesome games from the series for the price of a pizza ($26 CDN, to be exact). Oh, and the Anniversary Collection also includes Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, which is the October 2019 Game of the Month for the Cartridge Club! See, win-win.


Keep it spooky!
R

Friday, June 14, 2019

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) - 1989

Do you remember the very first video game you ever played? I know mine! It was Super Mario Bros. Do you know the second? Ooh, I do! It was Duck Hunt. But can you recall the third video game you ever played?

Mine was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!


It was Christmas 1989... but also possibly 1990? I'm a little nebulous on this. I know that my mother has a photo from the Christmas morning in question, but I haven't been able to find it to confirm. Either way, that Christmas I received a Nintendo Entertainment System Action Set, which came packed in with Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, but I also got another game, which was TMNT.

Regardless of the year, at this point in my life nothing mattered more than the Ninja Turtles. I was the prime demographic for the show when it launched in '87. By the time '89/'90 rolled around I would've been watching the Turtles almost every day in syndication, had plastered my walls with TMNT memorabilia, and swam in a bucket full of Playmates Turtle action figures. The video game, however, couldn't have been further from my mind.

I was around 6 and I actually had no idea what a Nintendo was. I can still recall getting it for Christmas and having no idea what I was looking at. My parents actually had an Intellivision when I was really young, but it had stopped working, so they were familiar with the concept, but I was totally in the dark.

As I recall, the first game I booted up was, of course, Super Mario Bros. It took a while to get used to how to move - which included a lot of me jumping with my controller, like I was somehow tethered to Mario himself - but I eventually got the hang of it. The controls in SMB make it easy. They are so tight. Once you get used to the idea of pushing buttons at the same time and how gravity works in the Mushroom Kingdom, you're well on your way to mastering the game.

This is, unfortunately, not the case with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The controls were a little bit "floaty". It takes some getting used to, but I would argue that the controls for TMNT get a bad rap. They are a little off, but the same could be said for countless other video games at the time and not just on the NES.

Another thing that jumped out at me while playing TMNT NES for the first time was how batshit crazy it is! The first enemies you encounter have some familiarity. There are Mousers and Foot Soldiers, but also killer bees? After a few moments, however, one of the game's weirdest features will rear it's ugly head. The enemies in the game will swap randomly. The other sets of baddies you face are out of some crazy nightmare.

Do you remember when the Turtles faced off against the Human Torch? Or a chainsaw wielding maniac in a hockey mask? Yeah, me either, but they're in there! There are also giant mutant frog men, robots with flying heads, a creepy hunchback that turns into smaller creepy hunchbacks, and these Lovecraftian jumping leg things that cling to the ceiling, just to name a few.

Honestly, I appreciate the creativity with the bad guys in the video game. Sure, the programmers had a lot to work with, having access to already established comic and cartoon universes, but there's no reason the monsters and enemies they created couldn't have existed in any other TMNT canon. I mean, there's a character in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics that is literally a flying, talking cow's head that slurps up/spits out its passengers and can cross whole dimensions of time and space.


You're my boy, Cudley!

I thought for years that the game must have been in development before the cartoon launched and that explained all the crazy bad guys that didn't marry up with the show, but that wasn't the case. The video game was certainly put into motion because of the fervor the cartoon stirred up and wouldn't have existed without it.

The game was developed by none-other than Japan's video game powerhouse, Konami. It was published by Konami in Japan, but under the Ultra Games imprint in North America and PALCOM in Europe, which was just a super hinky way for Konami to release more games in other regions than Nintendo would allow for at the time.

A quick note that the game was so popular in the PAL regions it actually got it's own NES bundle. Everything you needed to play Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles! Yeah, apparently ninjas are frowned upon overseas.


The game was released in Japan ahead of the Japanese dubs of the cartoon show, so maybe my theory about the progammers having to make up their own ideas holds some weight, but I'd say its just another case of Japanese developers doin' they thang.

The story is basically ripped from the cartoon: The Turtles find out that the Shredder has a "life transformer gun" (uh-huh...) and that they can use it to turn their master Splinter back into a human, so they're seeking out the Shred-dude to find it. Along the way they have to save April O'Neil from Bebop and Rocksteady, stop the Foot Clan from blowing up a dam on the Hudson River, save Splinter from Mecha-Turtle, find the Turtle Blimp at JFK Airport, chase Shredder to a hidden base, and finally face off against their enemy in the Technodrome. And eat lots of pizza along the way!


I think the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES is the box art. It was incredible. I had no idea at the time that it was ripped from the cover of the comic book! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Volume 1 Issue #4 featured cover art by the original artists/creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird (I honestly don't know who drew the cover). When it was re-issued years later, Michael Dooney re-imagined the artwork and took it to the next level. It was this artwork that was lifted for the game's box and label art and it's just so iconic.


If nothing else, the cover art confused every child that saw it. "Why are all the Turtles wearing red!?" Considering the wave caused by the TV series it is certainly surprising that they went with a comic book cover depicting the brothers in all red face masks, but that was how things were in the early comic books.

The player takes control of all four Turtles, each armed with their weapon of choice. This will lead you to a team hierarchy, whether you like it or not. Leonardo uses the katana, which are a great mid-range weapon that deal decent damage. Michaelangelo uses the nunchaku, which I would say makes him arguably the exact same as Leonardo, but sacrificing some range for speed. Donatello uses the bo staff, which while it is the most powerful of the stock ninja weapons is a little trickier to aim. Finally, Raphael uses the sai, which seem to be the least powerful and have almost no range. For Raphael fans, like myself, this sucks as Raph basically gets relegated to the "Turtle you're okay with sacrificing". I personally try to reserve Don for boss fights where his bo can get a few extra powerful hits in and for the most part I play as Leonardo or Mikey interchangeably, leaning on Leo since he's the first Turtle on the pause menu.


You can also collect sub-weapons. Most of them appear is random drops from enemies, like shuriken, triple shuriken, and the boomerang. You can select and de-select them with the... wait for it... select button. The most coveted sub-weapon is the Kiai - or as everyone else knows it - the scroll weapon, made famous by the greatest Nintendo commercial ever created, The Wizard! This bad boy was the most powerful and took up a lot of pixels for maximum effectiveness. You couldn't get this one from a drop, however. It was hidden somewhere in the game!


Another handy item you'll find along the way are the missiles, which you can launch from the Turtle Van. That's right, you get to drive the van! In the third stage you'll find it waiting for you on the overworld map. It protects you from Foot Soldiers roaming around the streets of NYC (just run them over!) and the missiles can break through roadblocks that keep you from finding Master Splinter. The last item that comes to mind is the rope, which you'll need to cross from rooftop to rooftop in a few places.

At the end of the day, even if you can master the controls and know where all the best weapons and items are hidden, this game is still so friggin' hard. If you've beaten Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES then you've earned a badge of Nintendo Honour, my friend. Most people I talk to can't get past the Hudson Dam.

Now, the NES wasn't the only place you could play this TMNT game. In addition to being available on Playchoice-10 arcade machines (essentially just arcade units with an NES in them), in anticipation for its popularity the game was ported to just about every PC platform available at the time. There were ports for the Amiga, Amstrad, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS DOS, MSX, and ZX Spectrum. There is a lot of varying quality here, as some of these were written by one or two coders at most and under strict timelines.

I haven't played any of the PC ports of the game, but the MS DOS port was one of my most coveted games when I was a kid. Back in the early-90s my local K-Mart had a really cool video game section, which none of the other stores around me had at the time. In it, behind glass, was a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for MS DOS in this beautiful big box and, boy, did I want it.

And, boy, am I lucky I never got it. From what I can tell it's easily the worst port of the game. The Amiga, Amstrad, and Atari ST versions seem to be the best graphically, and the C64 and ZX versions appear to be somewhat playable, but the MS DOS version just looks like hot garbage. The Pause Screen images are some of the most hilarious I've ever seen. April looks like some kind of insect woman.


Even better is that the QA behind the North American DOS version wasn't up-to-snuff and there is an impossible jump in the game. Some people have discovered a "no clip" code that allows you to bypass the jump, and some even more industrious individuals have written files from the European releases, which contain a fix for the issue, onto their NA copies of the game, but at the end of the day I doubt most people had enough patience to play the DOS version enough to give a damn.

So, like I said in the beginning, I think that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES gets a bit of a bad rap, because its fairly difficult and has slightly wonky controls, but it is without a doubt one of my favourite video games. It's probably the nostalgia talking, but only a handful of games can really take me back in time and this is one of them. I think, just like with many NES games, with a little practice and patience it's just as playable as most games on the system. It's a bright, colourful, and interesting take on the Turtle Universe and I love it.

But, there's more! In the near future we'll be talking about the sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game!

Stay tuned,
R

Friday, September 16, 2016

RyHo Vs The Legend of Zelda - Part II

All ready for my quest!

So, if you've somehow stumbled upon this blog and don't know what's up, get yourself caught up here!

Over the past few months I've had a real bug to play The Legend of Zelda series after seeing footage for the next installment, Breath of the Wild, releasing in March of 2017 on the Wii U and Nintendo's next console, codenamed "NX".

In my last post I mentioned that the next game I'd be tackling was Majora's Mask, the Cartridge Club Game of the Month for July 2016. That didn't really go as planned. I booted the game up a few times, but didn't get nearly enough time with it. I definitely want to play through it again. I think I'd rather play through Ocarina of Time first, though. My wife got it for me on the 3DS last Christmas and I've been dying to replay it. Maybe I'll pick up the 3DS version of Majora's Mask after that and give it a whirl, who knows!?

That said, I did continue on with my quest to complete Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and I was successful! If you're ever going to call a video game "Nintendo Hard", Zelda II is the one to pick.

Barba or Volvagia of the Hidden Palace

What I would say about the difficulty of the game is this: it starts out pretty difficult, because you don't know exactly how to handle certain enemies and you need to level up. Once you start figuring out the tricks for taking out your foes, getting new spells, leveling up, and learning new attacks the game simply gets more and more fun. It can still be very hard at times, but it's never completely out of control.

Another thing to note is that if you die and hit continue, you may have to back-track quite a way to where you expired, especially once you get to the second continent, but you always keep your levels and items so you can pick up right where you left off. I've heard horror stories of people saving their game and losing levels, but that didn't happen to me.

A knight teaching you a cool new move!

My one major complaint about Zelda II is that there are a few parts in the game where you basically have to find something totally secret to advance. Like, a false wall in a dungeon or a hidden town tucked away in a forest. I had to consult walkthroughs to find these secrets and that's annoying. If you're trying to play the game without "cheating" I don't know how you'd ever figure these things out on your own. I think it must've been a dirty trick by Nintendo to sell Nintendo Power magazines back in the day! Maybe if I was 10 again I'd have no problem searching Hyrule over and over until I found these secrets on my own or heard about them from someone at school during recess.

This is what I'm talking about...

Regardless, my opinions on Zelda II have changed completely since getting to actually play through the whole game. I think it's definitely a difficult game at times, but well worth playing. Once you get a hang of fighting in the game it can be really exciting and fun.

Yeah, I know. I'm pretty awesome, right?.

So, the question now is, what should I tackle next? Logically the next game would be A Link to the Past, another game that I've ashamedly never finished and I've always wanted to play. I think I'm going to take a little break from The Legend of Zelda for a bit, though. My wife is days away from having our second child and I don't want to start up A Link to the Past only to put it down for a few months.

I'll definitely continue on in my quest to complete A Link to the Past, though! And when I do the best places to follow are right here on Retro-Def, on Twitter with the hash-tag #RyHoVsLoZ, and on Miiverse.

Talk soon,
R

Friday, July 8, 2016

RyHo Vs. The Legend of Zelda


A few weeks ago at E3 2016 Nintendo debuted gameplay footage of the next installment in The Legend of Zelda series, Breath of the Wild. They pretty much staked their entire E3 presence around the game, and it has been exalted as the Game of the Show by just about all the video game news sites that were in attendance.

The crux of Breath of the Wild is that it is a massive open world which players can explore anyway they want. For a while now astute gamers have been comparing images from previously shared clips of the game and stating how it appeared to have some similarities with older LoZ titles and it looks like they were right on the money.

BotW takes a lot of cues from the first games in the Zelda series, like the original The Legend of Zelda or Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. These games, although remembered fondly, are incredible difficult and players are basically given no instruction on what to do. You're presented with an open world and you have to try and figure out what steps to take next.


This was refined in later entries in the series, like A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, where although you're presented with a fairly open world, you're give a defined path to walk through and aren't left completely on your own trying to figure out what to do next.

Watching the Nintendo Treehouse - Nintendo's in-house North American product development team - play through BotW at E3 hearkened me back to those old 8-bit Zelda titles and I found myself wanting to revisit them. So I did!

The first LoZ game I ever finished was the first one I played, Ocarina of Time. It's still my favourite, but admittedly I've never gone back and completely finished the titles that came before it. I've put several hours into most of them, but never made it to the end.

The other day I finished, for the first time, the original The Legend of Zelda and it was a blast! I had some help - I used a map someone on the Web stitched together with screenshots of the Overworld, and consulted a walkthrough a few times - but for the most part I tried to just play the game as it was intended. I could remember a few things I'd muscled through in the past; I quickly finished off the first dungeon - Level-1 aka The Eagle - and picked up some essential items, like Heart Containers, the White Sword, Magical Shield, and Blue Ring. After that, though, things got serious as I'd never played much further than that before. It took a little while, but I managed to get to the final dungeon, defeat Ganon, and save Princess Zelda!


I haven't made up my mind on whether or not I'm going to keep this train rolling and play through all the games I've missed in the series or not, but I pretty much instantly booted up The Adventure of Link and am slogging through that game now.

I've been posting my adventures to Miiverse and Twitter and you can follow along, if you'd like! On Twitter I've been hastagging the whole thing with #RyHoVsLoZ, so you can find it easily enough. Although I do own the original games on cartridge, I've been playing on my 3DS out of convenience, so I won't be livestreaming anything just yet, but maybe down the line I'll stream some Legend of Zelda goodness on my Twitch channel, as well. Who knows!


The game of the month for the Cartridge Club is actually Majora's Mask, a game I haven't played since it first came out, so I think I'm going to change gears soon and try to complete that game. I have played that one, as it came out after OoT, but it's been a long time and I'm anxious to give it another try.


So join me as I fight and puzzle my way through the many incarnations of The Legend of Zelda! I'm more than okay with a few tips as I play. Just keep the spoilers to a minimum!

Hope you enjoy,
R

Friday, August 28, 2015

Metal Gear (1988) - Nintendo Entertainment System

The NES title screen
When I was a kid one of my favourite games on the NES was Metal Gear... and I barely ever played it. An older neighbour kid had a copy and this guy lived and breathed the NES. He was the kid that mastered every game that he owned and Metal Gear was no exception.

He was also kind of obsessed with war and violence, so I think Metal Gear spoke to him on some other strange level that I couldn't really understand. He was actually passionate about it, in a way. Before we ever got to play the game he would explain it to us; he'd walk us through the story, like some old sage-like storyteller. His passion for Metal Gear came through and it became something more than a game.

We used to actually "play" Metal Gear outside. We'd pack up old backpacks with rations - granola bars and fruit snacks - and other "items" from the game. I can remember taping two empty 2L pop bottles together for an "air tank". Then we'd grab our favourite toy guns and hit the streets to hunt down the infamous Metal Gear and save the world.

Occasionally when my neighbour would bring the game over I'd give it a try, but mostly I'd just watch him complete it. He could easily do it in one sitting, so I'd seen him clear it several times.

I'd go on to become a huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid series launched on the Sony Playstation in 1998, but I'd never really gone back to play the game that started it all and sparked my interest in the series. Here we are in 2015 and I'm finally sitting down and completing Metal Gear on the NES all by myself for the first time!

Let's start with some brief history on the game: Hideo Kojima was a planner and game director for Konami's MSX PC division in the 80s. Before Metal Gear he had worked on a sequel to Antarctic Adventure entitled Penguin Adventure and an unreleased game called The Lost Warld. When he took on Metal Gear the combat engine wasn't working well and so he converted the game to be a stealth action game in which the player actually attempted to avoid enemies instead of straight-on attack them, which was the norm in most games at the time.

Metal Gear released in 1987 for the MSX2 in Japan and, due to its popularity, Konami quickly decided they wanted to port the title to other systems, like MS-DOS, the Commodore 64, and the NES.

The NES version of Metal Gear - for most of my life the only version I knew - is known these days for being a pretty bad port of the game. The team that developed it were given three months to convert the source code from Kojima's game and make a workable NES version. As a result, there are bad translation issues, hiccups in the gameplay, and the most glaring issue of all, which I'll get to at the end of this article.

NTSC front box art.
I actually played the MSX2 version of the game back when it was released as a pack-in with Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence on the Playstation 2 in 2006. I remember thinking, "Man, this game looks so much better than the NES version!" I was surprised that they didn't just release that game on the NES, not thinking about the technical limitations and difficulties in porting the game.

Even though there are glaring issues with Metal Gear NES, I still remember it fondly as my first foray into the world of Metal Gear, so I give it a wide berth and I just can't help that. It takes a lot of flak these days, especially after The Angry Video Game Nerd spoke up about his thoughts in his Metal Gear episode in 2010, but I don't think most of it is warranted and I even think, in a few instances, The Nerd was reaching.

Here is the description of Metal Gear from the NES release:

Crazed Colonel Vermon CaTaffy poses new terrorist threat to the world.
Outer Heaven leader CaTaffy has activated the ultimate super weapon: Metal Gear!
Responding to the crisis, covert unit "Fox Hound" is called into action, and that's where you come into play.
Trained in hand-to-hand combat and skilled in every weapon known to man, you're Fox Hound's lethal fighting machine, code named "Solid Snake".
But on this mission you better be sly as well, to surprise heavily armed enemies, busting 'em up quietly and rescuing their hostages before alarms are triggered.
Plus you gotta maintain radio contact with Commander South, who'll feed you crucial info on Metal Gear's whereabouts.
To survive, capture sub machine guns, Barettas, grenade launchers, and plastic explosives...Until you find and destroy Metal Gear, ending CaTaffy's reign of terror.

Now you might be thinking, "I remember playing Metal Gear as a kid and none of this happened!" Well, you wouldn't be wrong. The tight deadlines didn't just cause issues with the game's programming, but also with its localization.

At some point in the game's localization and translation process it was realized that the reveal of the true enemy (no spoilers here) in the game probably wouldn't fly with American audiences. The Persian Gulf War was nearing its end and American eyes were squarely focused on Western Asia and Northern Africa. It was decided that some changes would be made to the game's story, which is reflected on Metal Gear's box and in its instruction manual. An evil mastermind was interjected, (ridiculously) named CaTaffy - an obvious spoof on Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi - and your main contact in the game was renamed from Big Boss to Commander South.

Additionally, Metal Gear was chosen as one of the Worlds of Power NES game novelizations. Produced by Seth Godin, written by various authors, and published under the pen name "F.X. Nine", the Worlds of Power series was an attempt to present young video game players with the stories from their favourite games in the form of short novels. The source material for these games, however, was often based on the story in the instruction manuals and then elaborated heavily by the authors. So, in the case of Metal Gear's novelization the story is centered on Justin Halley, a.k.a. Solid Snake, and his mission to take down Vermon CaTaffy and his mobile assault weapon, Metal Gear.

NTSC back box art.
None of this made it into the final game, however. The game largely follows the same story laid out in the MSX2 version, in which Solid Snake is sent into a militarized complex in the Eastern Pacific called Outer Heaven by Big Boss - the leader of the special forces unit FOXHOUND - on a mission to save a captured comrade and take down a new threat to the world.

The game starts out with Solid Snake parachuting into the jungle surrounding Outer Heaven with nothing but his wits, his fists, and his smokes. You're quickly introduced to the Transceiver: a radio that allows you to contact different individuals for help in your mission. The leader of FOXHOUND, Big Boss, calls to remind you over main mission objectives: find and save Gray Fox and destroy Metal Gear.

Then you're launched into the game. It does a great job of showing you the ropes. This isn't your standard run-and-gun action title, like you'd expect from a war game. Stealth is key and you have to catch your enemies off-guard in order to take them out.

In a lot of ways, Metal Gear is more like a Metroidvania crossed with a top-down action-RPG. You're essentially dropped into an open world, but you have to access certain items and keycards in order to get to the next area. If it weren't masked by the war-sim look and feel I think most people would argue that this game is an action-RPG and not a straight action shooter title.

As I said, as you progress the game you'll find items to aid you on your mission: a gas mask so you can breath in poison gas-filled rooms, a flashlight to see in the dark, and infra-red goggles so you can see laser trip-beams. You'll also collect keycards that allow you to open doors to save POWs and find more weapons.

Saving POWs is important as it helps you to level up your rank. You start off on Rank 1, with a very short life energy bar and the ability to hold little in the way of ammo and rations, but this is quickly remedied by saving soldiers around Outer Heaven. POWs will also give you hints and Transceiver frequencies that will help you along the way.

You may start off with nothing but your bare hands to protect yourself against the enemy guards and bosses, but you'll find weapons strewn about that make taking out baddies a breeze. The hand gun can be found pretty quickly, as well as grenade launcher, and eventually a rocket launcher.

Boss fights might seem tricky at first, but if you have the right weapon they're usually pretty easy to take out. You can also find a silencer along the way so that you don't alert enemies of your presence until it's too late.

Lastly I'll mention rations. These items will fill up your life gauge, which is definitely a must-have at the beginning of the game when your life bar is so low.

One of the short-comings of the NES version of Metal Gear is that you don't collect rations and ammo as drops from fallen enemies, like in the MSX2 version. It's not really that much of an issue, though, because you'll find rations and ammo in many rooms in the enemy base and you can leave the room and come back in to stock up.

There are a few times where the game can get a little confusing as to where you should go. Much like a Metroidvania, I find if I stop playing for an extended period of time I can forget where I'm at or what objective I'm trying to accomplish and I end up wandering aimlessly trying to remember where I was.

The cover infamously stole images of Michael Biehn
as "Kyle Reese" from Terminator for the box art.
Honestly, though, I had a blast replaying Metal Gear on the NES. It is a great game, which is why it sold so well when it was released. It seems in vogue to trash it these days, especially with the MSX2 version widely available, but it plays really well. There are some hiccups; the menus are a little annoying to navigate when switching between items and weapons, but that's an issue in any version of Metal Gear that you'll play. Also, continuing after a death or from a password can drop you really far away from where you were last playing, which is a bit aggravating, but also par for the course with NES titles.

Other than that, the story is very cool, the translation isn't all the bad, and you kind of feel like you're playing out an 80s action film when you play Metal Gear. Even when I was dying over and over and having to remember where I'd left off I was having fun sneaking around the different buildings.

The MSX2 version is a much more polished and well-developed game, I'll admit that. On the whole, however, the two games are pretty much the same. Most of the differences between the two would initially seem like laziness on the part of the programmers, but it is all due to the tight time restriction the team had in turning around the NES port.

A few examples:
  • Jet-pack enemies that appear on rooftop areas don't actually fly in the NES port, but do in the original
  • When you die in the MSX2 version you can continue from a recent check-point, where in the NES port you are placed in a location - which may or may not be convenient - based solely on your rank
  • If you kill an enemy by punching them they may drop ammo or rations in the original game, but there are no drops present on the NES copy
  • There are two alert modes in the MSX2 game: one that only applies to enemies on screen and another that will continue into other screens and pulls in additional guards. The NES port features a mix: it only applies to one screen, but additional guards will always pour in
  • Cameras don't have a blind spot in the original title and you can only conceal yourself from them by standing still with the Cardboard Box item. In the NES version you can stay tight to the wall to avoid cameras as well as use the Cardboard Box
An awesome ad for Metal Gear!
The most glaring difference between the MSX2 and NES versions of the game is the final boss, and it's a doozy. As you would expect in the MSX2 version of Metal Gear the final boss is the Metal Gear itself. In fact, I'd dare say you'd expect that to be the case with any version. Unbelievably the NES version of the game doesn't feature the Metal Gear as the final boss or anywhere in the game! Instead you have to destroy a Super Computer, which apparently controls the Metal Gear.

In the original title Dr. Pettrovich, one of the captives in Outer Heaven and the creator of Metal Gear, teaches you the specific steps that are required to destroy his weapon, but in the NES version none of that is present. You just have to fight the Super Computer and call it a day.

I often wonder if Konami thought anyone would notice that the end boss wasn't Metal Gear, but were just so rigid with the timelines that it didn't matter to them. I picture some smarmy executive saying, "Most kids won't even reach the end of the game. Who cares!?"

In the end Metal Gear NES isn't a bad game at all. It has it's problems, but it plays almost identically to its MSX2 counterpart. I think it's only by comparison that it gets a bad rap these days. Regardless of what you think of the game I've had blast playing it these last few weeks. It sparked all the nostalgia centres in my brain and I enjoyed every minute of it. 

Writing this actually got me thinking about the Metal Gear series as a whole. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is being released on September 1st, 2015 and could be the end of the franchise. If you were to ask me about my favourite video games or game series I don't think I'd often say Metal Gear, but in reality I've been eagerly following these titles since the NES. I bought a Sony Playstation just to play Metal Gear Solid, bought a Playstation 3 just to play Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is one of my favourite games of that era.

I may need to rethink my list of favourite video games!

Metal Gear for the NES is definite recommendation.

Hope you enjoyed,
R

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Castlevania (1987) - Nintendo Entertainment System

Ouch, that kicked me right in the nostalgia!
Note: I intended this to be out for October and Halloween, but I got sidetracked by life and it's a few days late. Sorry for all the Halloween-y references!

I've had a tradition now for quite a few years. Every October I play through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in its entirety. Last year I kind of overdid it playing multiple speed runs of the game, so I made the decision that I wouldn't play through SOTN for October 2014.

I wanted to play something in my spare time this October, though, and I made the decision to go with something from the NES-era. Now in a shocking turn of events, you won't believe what game I decided to play... Castlevania!

I couldn't help myself! Castlevania is like the epitome of Halloween. It's a video game set in Transylvania at the turn of the 18th Century, which features bosses based on Universal monsters! The bosses include The Mummy, Frankenstein's monster, a vampire bat, Medusa, the Grim Reaper, and Igor. And most importantly, The Count himself! These are the kinds of images I thought of as a kid whenever October rolled around and the cool winds of Autumn started rustling the leaves from the trees.

One thing I didn't remember in my sentimental reminiscence is how damn hard this game is. I've been getting my ass handed to me every step of the way! To be honest, although I did play Castlevania as a kid, I actually more often played its sequel, Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, made infamous by the Angry Video Game Nerd. As a result, I'm no damn good at Castlevania. That's half the fun, though!

This first boss is driving me... batty! Hey-ohhh!
It's kind of like I'm playing Castlevania for the first time. I remember a lot of things; the music, basically everything from the first stage, the basics of the gameplay, but by the time I made it to the third stage everything started getting hazy. I remember fighting the bosses, but it's like I've never seen some of these stages before.

One other thing I'm enjoying is seeing all the familiar enemies from later in the series, in their original 8-bit glory. I didn't even realize how many of them have carried forward in the series over the years.

With all this good does come some bad, though. For example, the controls leave a little to be desired. They are clunky, and jumping can be a downright nightmare. When you jump in either direction, you're basically committed to that jump. There's no way to control how far you go. It is a set arc, so once you go for the jump, you better hope everything works out.

I can't do much complaining about the game, though. And honestly, it's almost 30 years old and a pretty early NES release. Everything from the games aesthetic, gameplay, and that incredible soundtrack make it an absolute must-play for any and all gamers.

It's time to wrap this boss fight up! Hey-ohhh! (I kill me.)
Castlevania is one of my favourite video game franchises of all time, and I truly hold it near and dear to my heart. It makes me kind of sad to know that Konami has moved on with the remake of the series with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, released in 2010, and that the franchise will almost certainly never return to its original roots. The series, however, has spawned many sequels and must have one of the highest ratios of great games in any franchise history. There are a lot of amazing Castlevania games out there to play and this game started it all.

You can pick Castlevania up on the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii Virtual Console services and physical copies certainly aren't difficult to find on eBay. Make sure to check it out, whether it's for Halloween or not!

Hope you enjoy,
R