Dead Tomb is a game that can spark your interest before you even start playing it. It’s based on a los??t media game, Temporel Inc. Its progenitor was released on the Videoway content delivery system, which means it just disappeared when the servic??e shut down.

Being the most complex game on Videoway, it had its fans, and they went to work remaking it by reverse engineering a recorded playthrough of it. I don’t have any firsthand insight on the Videoway, so I’ll again direct you to Hardcore Gaming 101’s write-up. Fans first recreated Temporel Inc. in Flash, and then Collectorvision created an NES port, which was released a few years ago on a cartridge by Limited Run Games under the name of Dead Tomb.

Now, 8-Bit Legit has released it on modern consoles, which makes the game much more accessible, as i??t should be.

Dead Tomb (Switch [reviewed], Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, NES)
Developer: Collectorvision
Publisher: 8-Bit Legit
Released: January 26, 2023
MSRP: $4.99

Dead Tomb is a verb-drive adventure game, which is sort of a halfway point between a point-and-click and a text adventure. To interact with an object, you pick a verb from a list. It’s a style of game most famous in Lucasart’s SCUMM titles, such as Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island. 

You play as a time traveler from ?the future, who gets waylaid on a trip back in time and finds themself in ancient Egypt. You’re captured by Pharaoh Seti I's soldiers, robbed, and dumped in a pyramid. Your goal is to try and find a diamond used to power your tim?e machine and escape.

It’s probably important to set your expectations with Dead Tomb. Maniac Mansion, this is not. It’s a much simpler and more linear experience. It’s not necessarily shorter (though it is quite short), but there is less chance that you’re going to become stuck or have to start over. There’s also far less backtracking involved, so it’s a bit more comfortable than Maniac Mansion, but also less complex.

That’s not entirely a bad thing. In fact, it’s a big part of Dead Tomb’s charm. Depending on your aptitude (and a bit of luck), you might still find yourself wandering in circles, occasionally trying to figure out what verb you need to use on a noun, but there’s usually a feeling of forward movement. Again, that’s going to depend on your adventure game literacy, but I?? definitely felt some momentum.

Where Dead Tomb can get a bit vexing is f?iguring out how it wants you to interact with the environment. You build up an inventory, but learning how to use it can be tricky, especially in the beginning. It’s not a matter of going into your pockets, p??ressing “use,�?nbsp;and rubbing it on something in the environment. Often, once it’s in your pocket, you need to approach something in the environment and select the right verb, at which point it says, “Pour ranch dressing on cheesecake.�?It feels kind of backward and unintuitive. Then, by the time you get used to it, you’re done with the game.

While Dead Tomb is not terribly cryptic, there are spots that go against common logic. Early on, there’s a nail driven into the wall. If you try to take it, the descriptive text says it barely moves. You have to try and take it three or so times before it finally lands in your pocket. I don’t think this is the only time I’ve seen such a mechanic (and? it on?ly happens once in the game), but it's always interesting to me when a game requires you to fail in exactly the same way repeatedly before you meet with success. Video games have instilled in me the principle that if something doesn’t work on the first attempt, I need to try something else.

On the other hand, you don’t have to worry about death. I mean, you can die in sometimes hilarious ways, but then the game just prompts you to continue, and you start back where you were. It contributes to Dead Tomb being such a brief experience, but I think I prefer it to just repeating puzzle s?olutions until I get back to where I was.

It also allows you to test out obviously ?bad ideas just to see your character d??ie.

I keep mentioning this, but it’s the brevity that bothers me most about Dead Tomb. As I said previously, you can complete Maniac Mansion in roughly the same timeframe, but that game has multiple solutions and gives you a variety of characters to put together a team from. Dead Tomb is linear?. There’s only one way to solve it. There may have been a secret ending I missed, but I’m doubtful.

It’s certainly a fun game while it lasts. The breeziness of the puzzles and charming but unremarkable soundtrack make it a comfortable experience. I really enjoyed playing Dead Tomb, I’m not sure I’m going to remember the game will stand in my memory quite a??s much as the history behind it. At least the price for the digital version makes that kind of experience absolutely worth the recommendation.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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The Famicom can be perceived as the birthplace of kusoge. While bad games have existed since the creation of the medium, the origi?n of t??he term itself is murky but generally is believed to have been coined in reference to a Famicom game.

Hoshi wo Miru Hito, translating roughly as Stargazer, was one such game that rose to the rank of kusoge no densetsu (crap game of legend). It’s easy to see why. RPGs blew up in Japan following the release of Dragon Quest in 1986, and here is a game that was quick to capitalize on that with one set in a sci-fi environment. It even predated Phantasy Star by roughly two months, but not Ultima, which had been doing sci-fi since 1982. Nonetheless, Hoshi wo Miru Hito wasn’t short on inventive ideas for the genre.

It’s just ??too bad they're buried beneath indesc?ribable suffering.

Aaaargh!

This look comes with the help of the fan translation started by KingMike and finished by brandnewscooby. If it adds any gli??tches that weren’t present in the original unpatched version, ??I really wouldn’t be able to tell.

You are dropped, without explanation, in a forest. Having no initial context is hardly exclusive to Hoshi wo Miru Hito, but it’s the sort of situation where your Dragon Quest experience really pays off. You’ll know that your first order of business w?ill be to find the closest town. That town is actually one sq??uare to the West, but you’d have no idea just by looking at the screen. It’s invisible. It doesn’t show on the world map. If you didn��t immediately go West, you wouldn’t know it’s there.

This game is about space psychics maybe Hot-B thought you mig?ht be psychic too!

There is someone who states that the town is hidden by the combined psychic power of its citizens, and I don’t know if that’s an excuse or if someone actually thought it was a good idea to have an invisible starting city. It’s honestly hard to tell with Hoshi wo Miru Hito, because there are already a tonne of design choices that leave you wondering if it comes down ??to laziness, poor p??????????????????????????rogramming, or just baffling intention.

The hardest part of starting out isn’t even finding the first city. It’s actually surviving the first few battles in order to level up. There are, depending on your? definition, three overworld areas, and each one has its own individual shuffle of enemies. In the first area, whether you face off against a foe that your underpowered protagonist can actually take on or a team of three more powerful bullies ready to pound you into the mud is completely random.

In a normal RPG, you’d just be able to run from battles where you were overpowered, but fleeing in Hoshi wo Miru Hito is a skill (Teleport) that you don’t learn until you reach level six or find the second party character. You also need to be cautious, because Teleport is used on each character individually?, and it’s possible to leave behind the party members who can’t Teleport.

Aiiiieeee!

If you go to the Northern town of De??us, you learn some nonsense, but one helpful piece of infor?mation is that your first party member is far to the south. This is where it really sinks in that Hoshi wo Miru Hito isn’t merely an RPG; it’s also an excruciating ordeal.

This begins the moment you leave the second town. Instead of appearing in a tile adjacent to Deus, you find yourself back where you started the game, one tile east of the Mamus, the starting town. You loop ??back around, then begin your travel South, at which point you’ll invariably fall down a hole into a small dungeon. However, you don’t need to traverse the dungeon. You can just turn around and go directly back out the door. You then find yourself�?back at Mamus.

That little trap-door dungeon appears randomly throughout the forest in your path to the so??uthern reaches of the overworld. It’s extremely difficult to avoid it, so you’re constantly just sent back to the beginning to ??start the journey over. If you’re astute, you might notice that your protagonist learns to jump as they level up. This basically means that if you walk them into an obstacle (what kind of obstacle is seemingly arbitrary), they’ll leap over it for a set number of spaces. In the beginning, this allows you to take a shortcut over the water next to you, which is some sweet relief, however minor.

This doesn’t let you pass the pitfalls, though. I learned to get by them by going slightly north?, then moving all the way to the East coast bef?ore heading south. There seems to be a shorter path where the trap doors happen.

N-Nooooo!

You go South, and eventually find another dungeon. Within that dungeon, you finall??y get the second party member, Shiba, who can jump higher than your original party member, Minami. However, I’m a bit confused about how the doors work in that dungeon. If you exit the door you enter from, you emerge from the other side of a wall. If you then go back into the dungeon, you enter from a different door, and exiting from that puts you back where you started. I think that someone got the spawn points wrong, and then never fixed them.

So, that’s the first part of the game. In the second part, you start fighting mo??re difficult enemies, and that kind of takes you back to square one, where you sometimes get into combat against enemies you can easily take, and other times you’re extremely outmatched. Plus, some of them can paralyze your characters, which you can’t heal until far later in the game. If you manage to win with your remaining party member, you can return to a healer, but they take damage for every step along the way and might die. In order to resurrect the??m, you need to brew a potion, take it to a different healer, and they’ll bring them back. Ugh, I feel frustrated just trying to explain it.

In the second area of the game, you quickly get your third party member, but you’re not done until you get the fourth. To do that, you have to talk to a few very specific people, a??nd they’re all behind locked doors. The locked doors are just kind of incredible. You need a keycard to go through them, but that doesn’t just unlock the door. The keycard is immediately used up, so to pass through it again, you need another. If you’re just carrying one key and you enter an enclosed area, you become perpetually trapped. You have to save and load your game.

And that’s where I wouldn’t want to be playing Hoshi wo Miru Hito on original hardware. Saving just generates a password. That’s not out of line with how the original Japanese version of Dragon ?Quest saved. However, it starts you off with only a rough approximation of the gold and XP you saved and sends you back to Mamus. Not being able to easily save before going through a locked door would dri??ve me insane. I would just straight up eat the cartridge before too long.

Ugggghhhh...

Not that my sanity was entirely safe. To get the keycards to just test a door, you have to buy them, and their prices are complet??ely insane. Y??ou’re going to be hammering the save state button just so you don’t waste these precious cards. Even then, you’re still going to have to grind like a stripper for the money you need.

To give you a sense of how much grinding is in Hoshi wo Miru Hito, I initially planned on having this write-up done last week, but I needed more time so I could do ?more grinding.

It would take me a very long time to explain all the ways that combat is an excruciating chore. F??rom the absolutely atrocious balancing, to the mess of a UI, I feel physically nauseous when I think back to playin?g it. It�?it hurts.

If you can believe it, I actually played Hoshi wo Miru Hito to complet?ion. After endless grinding and talking to random people for a while, you eventually go to the third area. There are, thankfully, a few tricks in th??is area that enable you to get through it a lot quicker.

You go into space, which is depicted as a few pieces of floating debris against a starry backdrop. But weirdly, you can just?? walk through empty space. I don’t mean jump, like you can over certain barriers and bodies of water. Your characters just straight up walk normally through the starfield. You can then bypass a lot of combat by walking on wa??lls, and then it’s just a matter of trekking across Hell’s half-acre to talk to some porpoises.

Hrmph!

Don’t worry about not being leveled up enough for some grand end-game encounter because there isn’t one. The finale of Hoshi wo Miru Hito gives you dialogue with three options??, and then you’re just given an ending based on your selection. You literally just choose your ending.

There’s a lot more that can be said about Hoshi wo Miru Hito and just how horrendously awful it is, but this write-up is already a lot longer than I usually aim for. It’s just??�?incredible. The best t?hing I can say about the game is that the music didn’t make my ears bleed.

This is quite possibly the worst game I have ever played, and I’ve been writing a column on bad games for nearly three years. I own Action 52 on the NES, and while that collection of games is equally �?if not more �?inept, at least the pain is relatively short-lived. Ganso Saiyuuki Super Monkey Daibouken, Japan’s kyuukyoku no kusoge (ultimate crappy game), is at least compellingly terrible. Playing Hoshi wo Miru Hito w??as a mistake. It’s not just terr?ible; it’s designed to prolong your suffering. Any merit it may have is drowned out by the screams of its victims. I think it might violate international law.

It was recently ported and ??re-released on Switch, but only in Japan. Hopefully, we’ll get a localized version in the West, but for now, we can torture ourselves with the fan translation.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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8BitLegit has announced that Dead Tomb, a ne?w NES game based on an old lost game,?? is soon to be released for Switch, Xbox, and the actual NES.

While Dead Tomb is a new NES game built from the ground up, it’s actually based on a game called Temporel Inc., which was a game for the Videoway, a very unique subscription-based content delivery system based out of Quebec, C??anada. Among its features was the ability to play 8-bit games, which would be loaded into the system’s RAM, which, obviously, emptied once you were done.

Because no one actually owned the games that they were playing, and the service eventually shut down, there are no known copies of Temporel Inc. remaining. However, there was a recorded playthrough of the entire game, so fans were able to reverse-engineer and recreate it, first as a flash game and now as the NES remake, Dead Tomb. If you want more than a quick summation, Hardcore Gaming 101 has a fantastic write-up that covers everything in more detail.

It’s a pretty cool story, and it looks like a pretty cool game. It has you stranded in ancient Egypt, trying to escape from a pyramid. Its verb-based adventure style harkens back to the glory days of the LucasArts SCUMM Engine. It’s been developed by homebrew v?eterans Collectorvision (which owns the Acclaim brand).

Dead Tomb is coming to Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and NES. It will be available for preorder on all platforms on January 19, 2024. The modern console version will be released on January 26. The NES vers??ion is scheduled to ship in Q3 2024 but is limited to 300 copies.

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When navigating the squalid wastelands of video games, I often must turn to reputation to figure out where to stick my fingers. In the West, few games have a reputation for being awful quite like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This is entirely because of the Angry Video Game Nerd, who I respect but isn’t always the best source since he’s primarily aimed at providing entertainment through a schtick. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been single??d out by him? as one of the darkest spots in the NES library. I have to disagree.

Oh, it’s definitely awful. Don’t assume that I’m here to defend it. It’s as boring as a lecture on the history of terrycloth?? (did you know it dates back to before 4000 BCE?) and as tedious as chewing through a concrete brick. However, what you might not expect is that, when examined through autopsy, a lot of it feels very deliberate, even if many of the decisions seem misguided. A game that tries to blaze its own trail and fails is a lot more interesting than one that just ineptly follows in another’s footsteps.

Blazing its own trail

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was created by the creatively named Advance Communication Company and released on the Famicom in 1988 as Jīkiru Hakase no Hōma ga Toki, or just Hōma ga Toki on the title screen. The full title roughly translates to Dr. Jekyll’s Hour of�?something. I often see the translation of “wand?ering demon�?or “wandering evil,�?which I think is correct, but the combination of kanji seems a bit obscure.

As the name implies, the game is (very loosely) based on the 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The NES/Famicom didn’t really have a good track record when it came to adapting classic literature. Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the first that comes to mind, as well as Frankenstein: The Monster Returns, Ganso Saiyūki: Super Monkey Daibōken, and, the most classic of them all, Where’s Waldo? More games probably should have just gone off the deep end when it came to interpretation, like Castlevania did. 

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde didn’t really have a lot of action and was largely a guy trying to use science to cure himself of being a jerk. It doesn’t work, and he permanently becomes forced to say the quiet parts out loud. There are ways you could make a game around curing shame with science. Instead, A??dvance Communication Company made a game about a dude walking through crowded streets, trying to contain his super-powered rage.

Immersive frustration

To celebrate human duality, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has you playing as Dr. Jekyll as you mak??e your way across town, apparently to be wed. Along the way, h?e’s assaulted by birds, barrels, dogs, and dickheads. Once he’s tired of being pooped on and blown-up, he transforms into Hyde.

Hyde follows in Jekyll’s footsteps??. The levels are reversed and turned into darker interpretations of themselves, and you walk to the left. Your goal as Hyde isn’t to just upend polite society with rudeness and murder. Instead, you fight mon?sters. As you work out your aggression by blowing up monsters, you fill up your goodness gauge and eventually turn back into Jekyll. This is narratively completely unrelated, but strangely faithful to the themes of the book.

The key to the Hyde sequences are that you’re trying to change back to Jekyll before Hyde can reach the same spot in the level where Jekyl??l transformed. If he pas??ses Jekyll, he drops dead on the spot, and it’s game over.

The biggest issue with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that it’s based around the idea that, as Jekyll becomes ??frustrated with rude people and terrorists, his stress builds, eventually turning into Hyde. Advance Communication Company decided to communicate the frustration that Jekyll is experiencing by actually making the player frustrated. It’s so incredibly effective in its immersiveness.

The damage of everyday life

While you’re walking as Jekyll, you’re constantly under assault. Kids hit you with rocks from slingshots, dead birds fall on your head, and guys drop bombs at your feet. Every hit you take knocks you back about a kilometer, and there are no invincibility frames. Once you’ve made contact with?? something you shouldn’t, you’ll fly backward and take damage until it eventually disconnects.

What pushes this into excruciating territory is the random movements of enemies. While you can eventually memorize when and where certain foes will spawn, there’s a lot that can’t be predicted. Spiders, for example, hang from a tree, and rise and fall on a thread. In a normal game, they would rise and drop at a constant rate, but in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde they move at different speeds and to different heights on their own whim. A spider may h??ang unavoidably in your path for ages. Then it might slowly climb higher until you can pass under it, before quickly falling the moment you step forward. This will, again, bounce you backward a few meters. Yo??u can’t just brute force your way through.

This isn’t so bad with birds and slingshot kids. They launch a projectile that does move at a consistent speed that you can react to. However, there are singing ladies who will spew musical notes in your way at random intervals and at differing amounts and distances. If you have the cash, you can pay them to stop, but first, you have to actual?ly reach them.

The bombs the dudes drop have fuses of differing lengths, so you have to learn when you need to trigger them to drop their cargo and then retreat quickly, and when you can just push forward and get out of the blast radius. What’s worse is that the bombs have really small explosion graphics and huge hitboxes, so you can’t tell when you’re still in the danger zone. It ca??n be agonizing.

Cut out all the good parts

While both the Famicom and NES versions have six levels, Hōma ga Toki has six different levels, while Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has a couple that repeat.? This also means that some enemies just don’t appear in the NES ??version at all.

Originally, I thought this was a lazy way of balancing the game. The Japanese version starts in a city level where you’re already up against some of the game’s harder obstacles, whereas the NES version has a more gradual difficulty climb. However, while I was thinking about it, I came up with another theory, which is that the regional publishers chose different hardware for their cartridges. I was going to look them up to compare, but thankfully, The Cutting Room Floor has a write-up explaining the discrepancy. 

It’s a little technical, but essentially, the Famicom cartridge was able to store a bunch of its graphical data in the PRG ROM, and move what was needed to the CH?R RAM. However, in the North American release, they used CHR ROM instead of RAM, wh?ich meant all the art needed to be stored directly on the ROM, which was smaller by 16KB. This led to two of the levels being rather lazily axed.

It’s unfortunate because one of the few strengths Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is its art. The backgrounds are very detailed and scenic, and seeing them twisted and destroyed in the Hyde sections is actually pretty enjoyable. The two levels that were cut are, arguably (if you want to), the best-looking in the entire game. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ?is a game that needs all the redeeming factors it can get. This just makes a bad si?tuation even worse.

Despite the immense frustration, it’s entirely possible to complete Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In order to accomplish this, you simply need to make sure that Jekyll gains as much of a lead over Hyde as possible over the stretch of the six levels. There are infinite continues, but using them means that Hyde?? gets scooched right up behind Jekyll, and that actually makes things more difficult, because you have less opportunity to recover ?when things don’t go your way. This means that you may need to repeat parts of the game more often than you’d like, but at least it makes success possible.

Not that I’m recommending it. I just feel it’s important to contextualize Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fairly. I had planned on having a write-up of Hoshi wo Miru Hito ready for today, but as I was pushing through it over the weekend, I realized I needed to allow myself more time to complete the game, otherwise I was condemning myself to spending my whole Sunday to suff??ering. So, I decided to pivot to a game I knew I wouldn’t have to spend the entire day beating my head against. I know how to s??elf-care sometimes. 

And I think that sums things up well: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde isn’t very good, but I’d much rather play it over Hoshi wo Miru Hito. In fact, I’d much rather play it than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Where’s Waldo? I have a lot of games in my library that are much worse than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and for some of those games, there aren’t things that I can point to and say, “See, this is actually interesting.�?/p>

The quality of an experie?nce isn’t a duality of good and?? bad. It’s not a scale, nor is it a checklist. It's all about engaging with the senses, but unfortunately, most of us can sense pain.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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I have really been looking forward to Retro-Bit’s NES reissue of 1991’s Hammerin�?Harry. However, in retrospect, this is partially due to me getting it confused with Don Doko Don, a 1989 arcade game in T??aito’s single-screen format. If I knew? what I was thinking about, I’d be even more excited.

Hammerin�?Harry is a port of Irem’s 1990 arcade game, which was called Daiku no Gen-san: Beranme-chō Sōdōki in Japan. While Irem is perhaps best remembered for their R-Type series, their back catalog is built from an extremely colorful mix of titles on both arcade and consoles. There are a lot of underappreciated greats like Undercover Cops and Gekisha Boy which, to be fair, are largely unk?nown in the We??st because they were never localized.

Hammerin�?Harry was, technically, localized, but it was only released in the tumultuous NES?? PAL region. Because of its late release in a limited market, it tends to resell for an extremely high price. However, Retro-Bit has sent me a copy of their recent retro re-issues to try out. It is both a meaty morsel to sink? our teeth into and something simultaneously insubstantial.

The nail that pops up

If you’re unfamiliar with the arcade version, there’s not much to say. It’s a sidescroller w?here you play as a beefy carpenter dude who wields a big mallet. A rival construction company tears down his house for no reason, and he heads out to file a complaint with their boss. 

It’s a pretty routine affair where you travel the six levels while bopping enemies. You can also (sometimes) deflect projectiles back at them, bash the ground to stun enemies, and bop upwards. Then there are boxes and other objects in the environments that you can send flying at enemies, as well a?s power-ups that give you a bigger mallet or protect you from an additional hit. In the arcade version??, you’re dead if you even brush elbows with an enemy.

While I say that the arcade version of Hammerin�?Harry is rather routine, it’s still pretty good. There’s a lot of variety in the levels and bosses, but more importantly, the graphics are very detailed and expressive. It’s also got a lot of pedigree, involving at least two staff members from the Metal Slug series: designer Susumu and sound composer Takushi Hiyamuta (HIYA!). I say “at least�?because, like in Metal Slug, everyone in the credits is listed under pseudonym??s that aren’t well attributed to actual people, even today. Any one of them might be hidde?n beneath a different alias.

On the other hand, the diffic?ulty sways like hung laundry in a tropical storm. Harry’s lethal need for personal space doesn’t help, but the level hazards are inco??nsistent, as are the bosses. It’s not completely unfair, but the first time through can drain you of precious quarters.

Stop! Hammer time!

The 1991 NES version is reasonably faithful. The levels and bosses have bee?n changed a lot to accommodate the more limited hardware to the point where they're all essentially brand new. There are only five levels instead of the arcade version’s six, but one o??f them is completely new. Rather than die in a single hit, Harry has a health bar. There are now bonus rounds between levels where you smack as many enemies as possible, kind of like whack-a-mole.

However, it’s the same wh?ere it really counts. Harry has all the moves and power-ups he does in the arcade, but more importantly, the graphics are still extremely detailed and expressive. Obviously, the NES can’t match the arcade game, but it’s not a lazy facsimile. The art is overall very impressive, even for a 1991 title.

I’m not sure how you feel about me spoiling a 30-year-old game, but the ending is the best part of the NES version. While the arcade has Harry climbing the evil construction company’s headquarters and bashing the boss until he changes his ways, the console version has that same boss flee the fight. In his place,? his receptionist bursts in, transforms into, like, the Ultimate Warrior, and tries to take you down. You then follow the boss to his house, which is the completely new level.

H’MM’RNHRY

Surprisingly, the console version of Hammerin�?Harry preserves the voice clips? of the arcade version. Each time you begin a level or continue after a death, Harry shouts, “Let’s get busy!�?When he dies, he exclaims, “Ouch!�?When you complete a level, someone shrieks, “H’MM’RNHRY!�?It’s surprisingly clear, even if it still sounds like a drive-thru speaker.

One place where it should have deviated from the arcade title is in its length. While it makes sense to keep a game short in the arcade, since people are usually standing to play, it leads to really short console games. In all, Hammerin�?Harry took me around 45 minutes to complete, and this was my first time playing it. I died plenty of times??, but ??there is no limit on continues, so there’s nothing to stop you from brute-forcing your way through it.

Hammerin�?Harry is far from the shortest game of the era. Off the top of my head, The Little Mermaid on NES and Kirby’s Dreamland on Game Boy are roughly the same runtime. Ho??wever, that’s hardly a compliment. It feels insubstantial, especially if you ?don’t have the Japan-only sequel to move on to.

What's in the box?

Thankfully, I do have the sequel to segway into. Retro-bit sent me the Concrete Collection which comes with their reissue of Hammerin�?Harry, and their localization of Daiku no Gen-san 2: Akage no Dan no Gyakushō, which has been translated to Hammerin�?Harry 2: Dan the Red Strikes Back.

For Hammerin�?Harry, Retro-Bit got creative with the cartridge. It’s encased in a wood-grained textured plastic. The feel of the cartridge is a bit smoother than an official NES game, but the construction is solid. I took it apart, and there’s a clean-looking PCB solidly fixed in there. These are the first NES games I’ve received from them, and it’s nice to see they get the same treatment as their Genesis titles. ?They feel like quality in your hands, but there’s?? no way anyone would mistake them as an original production.

The box it comes in is a lot like the one Battletoads and Double Dragon came in. It’s cardboard,? but it’s not the flimsy boxes original NES cartridges came in. It’s a lot more solid and has a magnetic flap that makes it easy to open and close without the risk of creasing. It comes with an instruction manual and an acrylic stand. I prefer to display my games on shelves like a library, but if you prefer the look of a store or place of worship, they’re pretty nice.

Unfortunately, the cover is based on the arcade artwork rather than the incredible European NES cover.

The only thing I wish for with these releases is a non-limited run. Like many boutique game publishers, pre-orders are taken in advance and manufactured based on sales. I absolutely understand how important this is when it comes to producing for demand and minimizing loss, but with the way it is, I can only talk about these games long after pre-orders have ended. The only lesson I can really teach i?s that Retro-Bit does s??ome mighty fine re-issues.

Tenderized

On the other hand, it gives me an excuse to talk about some obscure titles, which fits neatly with the?? intentions of this article. I appreciate Retro-Bit’s efforts in ??giving new attention to rare and unlocalized games through its re-issues.

Hammerin�?Harry was an exceptionally fun one to visit. As I said at the start, it’s been on my radar for quite a while. Beyond just being a s?hort but enjoyable platformer, it’s also an infectiously lively game with terrific art design packed with humorous flourishes. It might not be the console's best sidescroller, but it’s definitely not boring.

While there was only one Hammerin�?Harry arcade game, the series stretched on across many platformers throughout its lifespan. Only the arcade title reached North America, but the Game Boy game, 1992’s Hammerin' Harry: Ghost Building Company, did get a release in Eur??ope. That is until the 2008 PSP title, Hammerin�?Harry finally crossed the globe. It makes sense since the games are steeped in the culture of Japan. It’s just a shame that it’s taken until no?w for us to get an official release over here.

For other retro titles you may have ?missed, click right here!

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The original Doom recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, making me feel quite old. As well as being an early blueprint for the FPS genre, id Software's iconic shooter is also a popular modding playground. Sometimes, these mods harken back to? even older gaming days.

Modders Gokuma and Kontra Kommando have crafted a love letter to an absolute classic '80s slasher film. Specifically, they've turned Doom into Friday the 13th. More specifically still, they've based it on the?? NES adaptation, turning the 1989 side-scrolling game into a?? first-person shooter.

Set in Camp Crystal Lake �?as you would expect �?the mod brings back Jason Voorhees to "slaughter all those that would dare to step foot" into the camp. It's up to Doomguy to stop him, presumably. Currently, there's no full release date, but you can download the current beta from ModDB to try it out.

Life before Doom

It's interesting to see this kind of mod. While it could have been just set in the Friday the 13th universe in any respect, the creators chose to breathe new life (resurrect, if you will) into a game that's even older than Doom.

A lot has certainly changed over the decades for the plucky FPS. Th??ir??ty years is a long time in any form of media, but to see id Software's legendary 1993 release keep coming back for more is a strong testament to just how important the game has been to the industry.

There are so many Doom mods out there, some of which change up the formula immensely, not to mention the countless ways of porting the game. There's not really anyt??hing else like it in the video game world, so hats off to the stu??dio for bringing it to us.

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Money is really depressing to me. Not only have recent events left me with a deep anxiety about finances, it seems that a lot of people are struggling, and the best you can hope for is to struggle less. I don’t want to discuss this on a deeper level, so instead, let’s talk about Wall Street Kid.

Wall Street Kid is actually known as The Money Game II: Kabutochou no Kiseki in Japan, meaning that, yes, it’s the second in a series, with the first game never seeing a release outside of Japan. You could also look at the games as a spin-off of another Sofel series, Casino Kid, but they’re not actually ??related aside from sharing a developer.

I want to note off the top that I wouldn’t consider Wall Street Kid to be kusoge. It’s really not that bad, and Sofel did a great job localizing it by basically rebuilding everything to be more Western-friendly.?? It’s just such a bizarre game that I didn’t see myself covering it any other wa??y, and it fits best in this column. I’m mad with power.

The game looks easy, that's why it sells

Wall Street Kid places you in the leather wingtips of the eponymous protagonist as he’s informed of the death of a family member. Apparently, your distant uncle has pass??ed and left you his absurdly colossal fortune, but only if you prove that you’re already privileged enough to deserve it. Uncle Benedict has some pretty specific demands that you carry on the family name with undeserved dignity?.

You’re given $500,000 of seed money, and you need to play the stock market to build up your life. You ??need to buy a house, get married, honeymoon on a yacht, and then re-obtain the family castle. For some reason, you need to do this in four months. Otherwise, the $600 Billion (wtf!?) in assets goes to�?I don’t know, probably some g?reedy charity or something.

Those are some pretty in??credible demands from a dead guy with too much money and no children.

Essentially, it mean??s that you have to have enough money to pass certain milestones. At the end of the first month (April), you need to buy a $1 million home. That’s pretty funny nowadays with an out-of-control, overpriced housing market. 

Kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy

What’s f??unnier is that, at the start of the game, Mr. Kid already has a fian??cée, and you’re now obligated to keep her happy in order to receive your absurdly massive inheritance. That means she’ll keep coming to you wanting you to buy her expensive things and will leave you if you don��t. Ah, true love.

She must know about the inheritance beca?use this is practically extortion. She can demand anything ?she wants because if you don’t give in, she can just leave, and you can kiss that money goodbye. It’s a hilariously effective and cynical approach to a relationship. Every time the phone would ring, I’d find myself chanting, “Please don’t be my girlfriend,�?before advancing the text. Video games have always been great at teaching children about adult relationships.

To be fair to the fiancée, you can say no to some of her dema??nds an??d still succeed. It’s just if you don��t give in occasionally or ignore her outright that you lose.

Failing upwards

Games that simulate the stock exchange weren’t uncommon, even when Wall Street Kid hit the market. The concept is already pretty abstract and rooted in mathematics, so it’s a perfect fit for a video conversion. As such, there were attempts at stock exchange simulations before video games even left mainframe computers.

The milestones you have to reach are perhaps the only thing that really makes Wall Street Kid stand out. The day-by-day task of betting on stock is pretty b??oring. You get the newspaper in the morning that tells you what stocks are doing well, and the best way to succeed is to just put your money into one of the day’s top performers. I never had one severely crash out on me, but for that matter, I never lucked out and won big on something. It’s a rather predictable market.

Actually, I’m not sure if there’s even much room for skill here. The best strategy seems to be buying as much high-pe?rforming stock as you can at the time. When it stops performing, you just sell your stocks and trade over to something else. Whether or not that stock continues at that rate or not is kind of just random. Sometimes, not much of anything would rise in the market for me, so it wouldn’t matter what I picked. Realistic?? I don’t know. I’m not an investor.

Since there’s a newspaper, I would? have expected that it would cover events that impact certain stocks. Something like a worldwide telecom outage that affects the prices of ATNT or a war breaking out that boosts steel prices. There’s?? none of that. Categories of stocks just do well some days, and that’s about it.

Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew

At the end of June, you get to bid on the Benedict family castle, and by the end of July, you need to have enough money to pay it off. My playthrough video of Wall Street Kid is clocked at over 2 hours, but I accidentally said “yes�?to something I shouldn’t have in my first attempt and lost in the first month and had to start over. Really, you could probably put a bow on it in an hour if your wheeling is up to par with your deali??ng. And you don’t accidentally select the wrong dialogue option.

I failed at the end, falling a hair short of affording t?he? castle.

So, I guess I don’t “earn�?the astronomical inherit?ance. How heartbreaking. I guess I’m just going to have to live the rest of my life as a failure with my wife, dog, million-dollar house, yacht, and $2.5 million in assets. All that? hard work for nothing. Why must I suffer?

But I'll start over, and this time, I will have that inheritance that I deserve. Then, I will rub elbows with the other elite of this world. The champions who reign above average humans. And then I will gradually lose touch with the common person and form a spiritual hole where my humanity used to be. I will try to fill it, and when that doesn’t work, I’ll just hide it behind dead eyes, an empty smile, and a passionless relationship. I’d obscure it by establishing a charity for some popular cause. I'd show it to those beneath the heel of my boot that I still have a soul �?some sort of compassion �?while at the same time using it to dodge taxes and funnel money into my other corpor??ate endeavors before it lands right back into my pockets. Not one drop of my money should be touched by the d?isgusting sorts of people who seek charity. What have they done to deserve it?

Not like me. I earned every dime. I played Wall Street Kid.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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I mentioned this once before, but after the launch of the Super Nintendo in 1991 (1990 for Japan), Konami went through this weird period of producing licensed games that were way better than you’d expect. I’ve covered Bucky O’Hare, but there’s also Zen: The Intergalactic Ninja, and this one: Monster in My Pocket.

Monster in My Pocket is more than just a cheeky euphemism, it was this media franchise in the a??ge when everyone wanted a media franchise. Well, it was an attempt at one. It was based around a series of tiny figures produced by Matchbox, but they also pushed a cartoon special and a comic that only made it through four issues. It was pretty short-lived.

The Monster in My Pocket NES game came out in 1992. Among the short list of staff who worked on the game is Etsunobu Ebisu, who would become a major figure in the Ganbare Goemon series. I mean that liter?ally. The character of Ebisumaru is based on the guy. Now, he’s the president of Good??-Feel. The other staff members are hardly slouches, either, but Ebisu is the one who’s still relevant today.

So, yeah. It’s more attention than you’d expect from a lice??nsed game. Especially when you consider that licensed games at the time were typ?ically dredged up from swamps.

I will keep my analogies holstered

Circling back to what Monster in My Pocket actually is; they were tiny little rubber figurines of, obviously, ?monsters. They were pretty cheap, and you coul?d buy packs of them to fill your pockets with.

There’s a lot you can do when you just mash a bunch of monsters together, but the narrative of Monster in my Pocket is that Guile from Street Fighter II is evil, and he wants to�?Uh, do evil, I guess. Vampire and (Frankenstein’s) Monster set out to stop him??. To do so, they have to wade through all his various underlings.

Also, all the monsters are tiny. That’s i??mportant.

The plot might be pretty limited, but the really cool part of playing the game is seeing all the various toys you might have in your collection brought to life. Personally, I didn’t ever get into the toys. I would have been three or four when the??y first came out, so I probably would have just stuck them up my nose or wha?tever kids that age normally do. However, I could totally see the appeal of trying to identify all the various toys.

Shatter-pocket

As a game, Monster in My Pocket is a pretty standard side-scrolle??r with a shade of brawler. You run along and punch everything in your way, trying not to get hit in the process. Sometimes, you can ?pick up objects from the environment and throw them, but this is pretty rare and not all that useful. There are places where there’s a bit of branching in the environments, but it’s mostly just a “high road, low road�?kind of situation. Speaking of which, it isn’t immediately obvious, but you can double jump.

In a way, the brawler-sidescroller mix feels a bit like Shatterhand, but don’t get your expectatio??ns too high; this is a really basic game. At least it has two-player simultaneous co-op.

What really brings its quality up is its use of various effects and technical trickery that the NES doesn’t typically do well. This includes quickly scrolling backgrounds, four-way scrolling, and fake parallax effects. This was the sort of thing that Bucky O’Hare also did, as well as Zen: Intergalactic Ninja, but we haven’t gotten there yet.

Pocketful of pugilists

The downside is that the enemies tend to heap up on the ground of these levels, and it causes a lot of flicker, especially when you’re punchi??ng your way through the??m. 

This leads me to a question for other people who play a lot of NES: have you also just gotten used to sprite flicker? I’m not trying to diminish the limitation. It’s really dist??racting and doesn’t help the aesthetic whatsoever. However, when playing this, I realized that I don’t even notice anymore. I wonder if this is how children were able to tolerate it.

Anyway, the levels take you through a house, into a kitchen, out onto the streets, over a construction site, into Japan (weirdly), and then to a monster castle. Six stages. It’s a very short game, but there are limited continues, so it may take you a few attempts ??to get through it. Even with that, the first time ??I played it, I had it done with before the afternoon was over.

There is some variety to the levels, but not a whole lot. The bosses are really where it’s at. I kind of wish I knew who these toys are. I think the first boss is Mad Scientist, and the ?fifth boss is?? Banshee (who was apparently never released). The bosses are pretty simple, but they take some pattern memorization to take down without dumping a few lives.

Evil-Guile's revenge

The music is pretty pleasing, as well. The track for the fifth level, Oriental Illusion (I know), sounds like it could have been from one of the Ganbare Goemon games. I don’t think there was really much of an existing soundtrack to base the game’s ?music on, so it’s basically just top-shelf NES noodling.

I think the point I’m trying to land here is that Monster in My Pocket is way better than it should be, but not all that special aside from some technical delights. It has an advantage over Bucky O’hare in that it isn’t especially frustrating. Plus, there’s two-player co-op, if you can handle the?? extra ??flicker.

However, that’s what makes games like Monster in My Pocket more fascinating. It doesn’t feel like it should exist. Why not a Sega Genesis or SNES game instead? That seems like it woul?d be easier. The fact that it was released on a console that was at the end of its lifespan, I w??ould have expected it to be phoned in. But it’s not. It’s a completely competent game. Inoffensive at its very worst. Developers who were well beyond what the project called for still gave an impressive effort. You’ve got to hand it to them.

For other retro titl?es you may have missed, click right here!

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Licensed games have tried their damnedest to nail the original theme songs and other aspects of film scores. Horror games are no different, and we've seen plenty of successful examples?? over t??he years. 

Going as far back as the tinny notes of Halloween on Atari 2600, there's something about the limitations that make these soundtracks even creepier. Without access to orchestration or even proper synths, retro ho??rror games have held on to a unique kind of spookiness. They're equal parts charming and, in some cases, manage to nail the vibe of their source material without carrying over every single note. In honor of those unusual, haunting melodies, we'll take a moment to touch on a handful of them.

The game where HE comes home

Wizard Video published Halloween for Atari 2600 in October 1983, a? full five years after John Carpenter's seminal slasher hit theaters. Tim Martin and Robert Barber's rudimentary efforts featured pretty much zilch from the film, outside of the box art. It did manage to technically be gorier, though, and they put in the work to include Carpenter's unforgettable theme. Its simplicity is one of the reasons it's been such a bone-chilling earworm for over four decades, so it doesn't take much to keep its vibes intact.

Are you ready for Freddy? 

It would be a wild understatement to say A Nightmare on Elm Street made an awkward leap to Nintendo's console ??in 1990. The side-scroller may have swapped out Wes Craven's specific dream scenarios for bats, rats, and spiders, but the soundtrack has its own charms. The game itself was published by LJN and developed by Rare, which meant we got a David Wise score that hit both the creepy and catchy ends of the spectrum. 

Chiptunes make me feel good!

When it comes to Ghostbusters games you have a few choices of extremely varying quality. For bobble-headed 16-bit action you can pop in the Genesis game, for instance. If you don't feel like having fun, you can take Ecto-1 for a spin in Ghostbusters on NES. The latter keeps a reasonable facsimile of Ray Parker Jr.'s theme song running throughout. Seriously, it plays the entire time. Oddly enough, considering their famous lawsuit against the song, it's about as successful a take as the Huey Lewis tunes in LJN's Back to the Future NES game. The important thing is you know you're playing Ghostbusters, ??even if y??ou're not likely to recommend it to anyone else.

Besides, you'll always be better off playing New Ghostbusters II. 

Vampire Hunter

Annie Lennox and Wojciech Kilar's soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula is full of sweeping orchestration. The 1993 video games �?which made? their way to everything from NES to Game Gear, SNES, Genesis, Amiga, and beyond �?are not. Many of the versions are wildly different from one another, with the Game Boy take playing out like a traditional platformer and the Sega CD port including FMV scenes from the film. There was even a first-person DOS game! 

As disparate as some of these attempts may be, there are some soundtracks in the lot that successfully evoke the mood of the source material. Bram Stoker's Dracula on SNES has a lot of memorably fitting tracks. Some are pure mood pieces, while others push forward with a more action-oriented, Castlevania momentum. 

Sunsoft strikes back

Giving any company especially high praise for their music during a generation known for its enduring video game soundtracks is saying something. Sunsoft almost always managed to drop some dynamite, even when the games themselves didn't live up to their tunes. Gremlins 2: The New Batch landed somewhere in the middle when it launched on NES and Game Boy in 1990. Composers Naoki Kodaka and Nobuyuki Hara have stacked résumés that include the likes of Batman, Blaster Master, and U-four-ia: The Saga. 

Sunsoft's Gremlins 2 score conveys the playful, mischievous spirit of Joe Dante's fourth-wall-shatte??ring sequel with style. It's particularly crunchy, making you?? want to play it loud before Play It Loud! was a thing.  

Ah, ah, ah, choo, choo, choo

If ever there was an example of a game that managed to be scary while only taking the bare essentials from its inspiration, it's Friday the 13th on NES. Kids of the late '80s found themselves scared and confused in equal measure as they attempted to explore the campgrounds and survive sudden cabin-bound fights against Jason. Composer Hirohiko Takayama (The Karate Kid, Xexyz) crafted a theme just as spooky as ??the Ch-ch-ch-ah-ah-ah found throughout the sla?sher series Sean S. Cunningham kicked off back in 1980. 

Exploring Camp Crystal Lake isn't all doom and gloom. Some upbeat tracks made its somewhat esoteric design tolerable, too. The type of? musical dichotomy you may find in old-school horror games like this are emblematic of the genre itself. Horror films can be scary as hell, but they can also be goofy and fun, whether it's intentional or not. If a horror game soundtrack manages to capture even a modicum of that magic, it will alw?ays be worth revisiting in some form. 

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8-Bit Legit has announced they'll be handling the publishing duties for Project Blue, an NES-s??tyle cyberpunk sidescroller by ToggleSwitch/FrankenGraphics that is coming to modern consoles with a physical release on NES.

Writing about new NES games never gets old. Project Blue casts you as Blue, a child trying to escape a research laboratory in Neo Hong Kong. The trailer advertises Perfect Blue as being built from 256 screens, which kind of makes it look like the underappreciated Legacy of the Wizard. In fact, a lot of the game looks like a futuristic Legacy of the Wizard, which I am totally down for. The publisher also says that there will be three difficulty levels that will modify the?? game’s layout??, which is pretty spiffy.

It’s worth noting that you can already grab Project Blue on PC over on Itch. 8-Bit Legit is the publishing arm of Retrotainment Games and Mega Cat Studios, and is just handling publishing on consoles. I know Retrotainment from Garbage Pail Kids, which was a pretty terrific NES release.

I’m always on board for a new NES game. We’ve come a long way from the early days of homebrew titles. Now, we’ve got boutique publishers who handle all the curation and quality control. It’s nice to have the option to play it on ??modern consoles, but given the option, give me that plastic rectangle and let me slot it into my computer-toaster.

Project Blue is?? currently available on PC. The console version will be available for pre-order starting on September 29, 2023, and the retail release will follow on October 6, 2023.

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The Nintendo Family Computer (more commonly known as the Fam??icom) launched in 1983 in Japan, a full two years before its Western analog, the NES, debuted in North America. This was right as the video game market underwent ?a temporary implosion in other parts of the world and was strangely the best time possible for Nintendo to break into the home market. 

Collecting for a Japanese console can cause some hesitation for an Anglophone. The fear is that the best games will remain in their native language, and you’ll be left with piles of RPGs where you can't even navigate the menus. That can certainly be a problem as you get into later generations of consoles, but with the Famicom, there are a lot of great games that don’t require much rea?ding comprehension.

To make things more tantalizing, the Famicom is a relatively cheap console to collect for. While the price of NES games have been climbing to upsetting levels over the past few years, the Japanese ??collector’s market hasn’t really moved much. Most titles in the system’s library don’t exceed $50, and many of them have a higher price tag becaus?e they’re regional variations of expensive NES titles.

Beca??use of its accessibility and ??affordability, the Famicom has remained my favorite console to import for, so I’m going to share some of that knowledge with you.

The Games

The Famicom is a lot more than just the Japanese NES. While you can get nearly identical versions of popular titles like Super Mario Bros. and the Legend of Zelda on bot??h platforms, the Famicom offers a whole world beyond that. If you love the NES but feel you’ve plumbed the depths of its library for all the gems it has to offer, then the Famicom is where you shoul?d go next.

When I started out with the Famicom, I mostly targeted three main groups: Nintendo, Kunio-Kun, and Konami.

There are very few Nintendo games that stayed exclusively in Japan. Of these, most are on the Famicom Disk System and are visual novel titles that are impossible to play unless you speak the language. But two of them stand out: Joy Mecha Fight and Devil’s World. The former is a fighting game in the vein of Street Fighter II, while the latter is a weird maze game (like Pac-Man) designed by Shigeru Miyamoto.

A great deal of the Kunio-Kun/Nekketsu/Downtown games stayed in Japan. You might know these games better as one of their localized titles: River City Ransom or Crash ‘N�?the Boys. Since they’re all part of one series, you might expect that there would only be a small number of titles, but there’s actually just short of a dozen. My personal favorites are Ike! Ike! Nekketsu Hockey-bu and Nekketsu Street Basket: Ganbare Dunk Heroes. Note that you can now get all of these titles as part of the Double Dragon & Kunio-kun: Retro Brawler Bundle.

Finally, there are the titles Konami never localized, and there's a lot of them. Over here, we knew the company mainly for titles like Contra or Castlevania, but in Japan, they offered a whole lot more. There are the Ganbare Goemon games (including two RPGS), a port of Parodius Da, Crisis Force, and several hidden gems. Then there are the two Wai Wai World crossover games. I spend a lot of time extolling the greatnes??s of Konami’s Japan-only library, and that isn’t about to stop.

The Hardware

The most common version of the Famicom is the original beige and red model. It’s a little uncomfortable for modern gamers for a few reasons. The first concern is over the console's extremely short controller cables hardwired into the system. The idea is that you’ll pull it off the shelf and play it on the floor,?? but that’s not a very Western thing to do. The easiest way about it might be to just use a long AV and power cable so you can pull the whole console over to where you sit.

If you’re crafty, you can modify the controller cables to give you more length. However, another option is to use the extension port o??n the side. There’s a variety of t??hird-party controllers that you can buy, as well as extension cables and wireless controllers that can be used through that port. Be careful, though. A controller is wired either as a first player or second player. A player two controller plugged into the extension port will only act as a player two controller. So, if you're playing alone, you need to make sure you have a player one controller.

The other downside is that the original Famicom model only? supports RF out. This looks terrible on m??odern TVs and can be rather grainy on CRT. You’ll need to modify the console if you want better output.

The one I use is a Sharp Famicom Twin model. These are unique because they have the Famicom Disk Syste??m built in. They also support composite out, which provides a better video signal than RF. However, remember that these two have hardwired controlle??rs with short cords.

The last common Famicom model is the “New Famicom,�?sometimes called the “AV Famicom.�?This one is visibly similar to the “New-Style NES�?(or top-loader), with a few differences. Most importantly, the controllers aren’t hardwired, and it has a composite video output. It’s generally a b??it more expensive than the standard Famicom, but it’s much cheaper than the Sharp Twin models.

You might also consider just using a Famicom adapter for your NES. This essentially just changes the Famicom’s 60-pin configuration to the NES�?72-pin and allows you to play Famicom games on your NES with some caveats. First, Famicom game cartridges aren’t standardized, so some are much taller than others and won’t fit in an NES. Second, games that use specialized chips for additional audio channels will work, but you won’t get the boosted soundtrack. For example, Akumajou Densetsu, which is the Japanese version of Castlevania 3 won’t have its deeper soundtrack.

Since my NES is RGB modified while my Famicom isn’t, I’ll often use my NES to get a better picture through an upscaler. However, I love hooking the Famicom up to an old CRT for that authen?tic feel.

Finally, there are plenty of clone Famicoms available. While a lot of these are rather inconsistent in quality, there ??are enthusiast consoles like the RetroUSB AVS and the Analogue NT Mini. They can be useful if you want a simple, a??ll-in-one solution without the need for tinkering.

The Famicom Disk System

If you’re feeling even more adventurous, it’s worth getting into the Famicom Disk System. This expansion to the console allows you to play a subset of games that were released on what are essentially recognized as floppy disks. This is where you’ll find games like Nintendo’s own Famicom Grand Prix 2: 3D Hot Rally and Nazo no Murasame-Jou.

Like standard Famicom games, these are genera?lly cheap and easy to come by, with some standout titles being a bit more expensive. Not?hing like some games in the NES library, however.

Getting the Famicom Disk System itself isn’t too expensive either. There’s one thing to note, however. The FDS console’s drive belt is prone to, er, melting. It’s an almost unavoidable flaw of the system, and chances are, if you have an FDS, it either has a broken belt or one you've already replaced.? Replacing the belt isn’t as easy as it sounds, either. Putting a new one in is? simple enough, but disassembling, recalibrating, and reassembling is a bit more difficult.

Likewise, the disks have the same issue as normal floppy disks: they are prone to degaussing. That is to say, they can lose the ??data written to them. Of all the FDS games I’ve handled, I’ve only found one that doesn’t read. Most sellers will test the games first, ensuring they're still functional.

The disks are rewritable, too. So, that's led to some fancy hardware hacks allowing for the restoration of degaussed games. This isn’t easy or accessible, but in the fu?ture, there may be more options when it comes to restoring the data on these disks.

Where to get a Famicom supplies

This one is a bit trickier. The absolute best way would be actually going to Japan and visiting one of their many fantastic retro game stores. Doing this will allow you to choose the condition of the games more easily. Likewise, it will give you access to a lot of games that still have their boxes a??nd manuals. For some reason, Japanese gamers were in the habit of keeping their packaging, which is pretty cool.

However, that’s not a very realistic option. Unless you have a particularly well-stocked retro game store near you, you’re probably going to have to order online. Personally, I still use eBay, but there are non-auction websites you can go through. In the wake of COVID, there are a lot more stores that have turned to selling internat??ionally on eBay, which is a benefit to importers. There are a tonne of well-stocked and reputable stores you can browse through.

Shipping can be an issue, especially if you’re buying consoles. Many sellers allow for c?ombined shipping, and since many Famicom games reside in the $20 and below range, it's easy to score a big care package of games. Shipping from Japan is often very quick unless you go with seamail. Seamail can take weeks, while I’ve had packages shipped by air arrive in a few short days.

Why you should get a Famicom

I’m not sure if I’ve said this enough, but the Famicom is more than simply a Japanese NES. It has an ecosystem of its own, with tons of quality titles unreleased in the West. Furthermore, there are unique experiences that we missed over here, like secret-heavy titles such as Atlantis no Nazo or fascinating kusoge like Spelunker II. Even while the NES has a well-rounded library of its own, the Famico?m provides even more depth??.

If you need recommendations, you can check out my old Famicom Friday column. However, I feel like part of the fun is diving into the unknown and seeing what you turn up. It’s still a bit of a frontier for a lot of video game hobbyists, so there’s a lot to discover on your own. And that’s what’s so exciting about the Famicom. There’s a lot of stuff that you just don’t hear about in the West, and, personally, ?my favorite games are the ones I haven’t played before.

The post Destructoid’s guide to collecting for Famicom appeared first on Destructoid.

Soda Drinker Pro is an odd one. Created by Will Brierly a hog's age ago, it eventually made its way to Steam and Xbox One. I was turned onto it back in the day by the relentless enthusiasm of Destru??ctoid grizzled veteran Jonathan "Grizzled Veteran" Holmes. With Unity making an impressive attempt to implode a massive section of the indie development community, Will Brierly has decided it's time to stick the nee??dle in and get sucking as much cash out of enthusiastic soda drinkers as possible.

Via the Soda Drinker Pro website, Will Brierly has announced t?hat beginning January 1, 2024, a diabolical new monetization scheme will be implemented.

Historically, Soda Drinker Pro functioned on a one-time pur?chase model. However, after an exhaustive analysis of our revenue streams and the game's mechanics, which merely simulate the act of sipping a digital beverage, we have determined that a per-sip fee optimally aligns with our business objectives. Each sip activates a specific segment of our proprietary code, thereby justifying the incremental charge.

You can view the full details of just how out-of-pocket you will be here on the Soda Drinker Pro webzone.

Just kidding

The whole Unity price structure is a big upsetting situation. Considering all the indie devs I follow on Twitter, my entire feed has been taken up by the outcry against it. And for good reason. It's the sort of greed I expected when John Riccitiello took the position of CEO in 2014. I'm mostly surprised it took them this long to switch into ho??st-murdering parasite mode.

The upside to this is that, by wading into the conversation, Will Brierly has notified me that Soda Drinker Pro is coming to the NES. The trailer went live August 25, and I somehow missed it. The shame I feel right now ?should really spice up my self-flagellation routine later tonight.

More information is coming soon, but Brierly has stated that Snowrunner and Limited Run Games assisted with the production. I'm assuming that means it will be distributed by Limited Run Games, but we'll have to wait and see. We'll also have to be patient to find out if secret game Vivian Clark will also be getting an 8-bit upgrade.

Soda Drinker Pro is currently available on PC and Xbox One.

The post This awful Unity business led to me learning of Soda Drinker Pro’s upcoming NES port appeared first on Destructoid.

I was first introduced to Bucky O’Hare through the NES game. This was back in 2010, long after the cartoon was off the air. It’s an interesting game, which I’ll get to in a bit. However, I quickly grabbed the cartoon to watch and maybe gave up after two episodes. I know that two episodes is a pretty brief amount of time to try and form an opinion on a show, but I couldn’t stand it. It was a horrible maelstrom of bad at?tempts at wordplay and n??auseating self-righteousness.

The ship that the eponymous Bucky pil?ots is called the Righteous Indignation, which really tells you all you need to know about the show’s tonality.

The cartoon was based on a comic from the late �?0s, but it’s one of those shows that were pretty obvious in their intention to sell toys. However, it did wind up with a couple of video games by Konami, one for the arcade and the other for the NES. Fortunately, b??oth are a lot more tolerable to me than the cartoon. So let’s look at the NES version.

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Terrible wordplay and furry appeal

The Super Famicom was released in 1990 in Japan, followe??d by the 1991 SNES release in North America. Publishers were quickly abandoning the NES and Famicom in favor of the new platform, but there was still a number of quality g??ames that were released before the last official NES title dropped in 1994.

During the waning years of the NES, Konami, in particular, did a number of mostly licensed titles that were of unusual quality. These were games like Monster in My Pocket, Zen: Intergalactic Ninja, and Bucky O’Hare. None of these were particularly great licenses. None of t??hem really surv??ived the �?0s. But if you were expecting a crap game to go alongside them, you’re in for a surprise.

I’m not saying that any of these games are great. It’s just they’re a lot better than you’d probably expect. While they do seem somewhat rushed, they all display a level of?????????????????????????? technique that you don’t ?find in the era’s licensed games. It’s like an extremely talented development team decided to phone it in.

In the case of 1992’s Bucky O’Hare, that’s exactly what it is. Its director was Masato Maegawa, who went on to found the le??gendary development studio T??reasure.

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Quantum kidnapping

If you’re unfamiliar with the premise of Bucky O’Hare, it’s essentially Star Wars with furries. It takes place in an alternate reality nau?seatingly called the “Aniverse�?because everyone in it is an anthropomorphic animal. The Toad Empire is making life hell for anyone with warm blood. Bucky and his crew are rebels, fighting to free all the mammals from beneath the slimy heel of the Toad Empire. Also, there’s a child insert character who gets transported to this parallel dimension because nothing cements a fantasy in a child’s mind quite like quantum kidnappin??g.

The game is largely similar to the platforming in the Mega Man series. The crew of the Righteous Indignation is captured by the Toad Empire. Starting out as bucky, you choose from four planets, each with a different member to save. Don’t pick the ice planet, though. You’ll be stuck. You first need to save Blinky f??rom the Green Planet, since he’s the only one who can break ice blocks.

You can sort of see the Treasure DNA in Bucky O’Hare. Each planet has a traditional twist that makes it different (fire, ice, yellow, etc.), but things get changed up pretty frequently in each level. The Yellow P??lanet, for example, has you riding on meteors one moment before later riding on a?? cart at processor-meltingly high speeds.

Similar to Zen Intergalactic Ninja and Monster in My Pocket, there’s a lot of programming magic pushing the NES to its limits. Parallax scrolling, huge objects that make clever use of the background layer, gadgets that are made to look like they rotate. There was cooler stuff happening on other platforms at the time, but Bucky O’Hare is a good place to ?see all the trickery that ??could be pulled off on the NES.

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Croak toads

The downside to this is that the game isn’t great. It’s not bad, and in a lot of ways, it’s better than your typical licensed game. It just isn’t fabulous. I wasn’t that far into Bucky O’Hare before I started wondering why I wasn’t playing Little Samson instead, as th??at game has a lot of the same concepts but with better execution.

For starters, the characters are very uneven. You can trade them out at any tim??e, but it’s best to just use Bucky unless someone else’s skill is needed for a situation. Everyone has their typical weapon and special ability, but they’re rarely useful. Jenny, for example, has a laser that doesn’t do as much damage as Bucky’s normal shot, but she can also summon an energy sphere that I could never land on a ?target. The developers probably could have just gotten away with making every character interchangeable so you could play as your favorite, but they went with a half-measure that doesn’t work well.

But the biggest problem is that there’s just so much instant death in the gam??e. There are too many instances?? where you just touch certain parts of the environment, and your character drops dead. I once momentarily slipped off a log going across some water, and while my character stayed on the raft, they collapsed on the ground because their toe got wet.

The only real punishment for dying is losing any built-up health you have whenever you ??need to continue, but extending your life bar isn’t that important. You’re most likely going to die from one of the insta-kill hazards, so it doesn’t matter how much life you have. As a result, losing all your lives is just an inconvenience because it sends you back to the beginning of the act you were on.

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A buried treasure

The music is at least terrific. It was apparently composed by Tomoko Sumiyama, but I’m not entirely certain about that. They were credited as a sound designer on Laser Invasion and Rampart (the Famicom version), and then I can’t find them having composed anything after 1992. No??netheless, it’s an enjoyable little bop that fits in with Konami�??�s other stellar soundtracks.

As a whole, Bucky O’Hare isn’t a great title, but it’s a lot better than you might expect from a licensed title. Especially a license that isn’t that well remembered. I can only assume Konami was hoping that they were scooping up a license that would let them repeat the success of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. That plainly wasn’t the case.

For that matter, it also doesn’t feel like a lost Treasure title. While you can see some of the flourishes that would help define Treasure’s later games, it’s overwhelmed by how much it lifts from the Mega Man formula. If you’re already a fan of both Treasure and Mega Man, you might still be let down by how loose and uneven the whole thing is. Instead, go in with the ??expectations you’d have for an obscure licensed game, and you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.

For other retro titles y?ou may have missed, click right here!

The post Bucky O’Hare for NES is a Saturday morning treasure appeared first on Destructoid.

The best menu screens in games can be articulated in many ways, just like the sheer amount o??f options you can get from the feature itself. In my mind, they're determined by the music, the visua?ls, and how unique they can be. You don't want to see a bland introduction to a magnificent game. Here are the top 10 best main menu screens in games, ranked.

Before we start, I have some honorable mentions. While it's too soon to rank this alongside long-standing greats, Sea of Stars' main menu screen is an impressive introduction to its world. The flickering of the flames reflecting on the pixel-based characters, and the gorgeous backdrop is absolutely stunning. Additionally, Rayman 2: The Great Escape's menu features strange, yet enticing music with a view of the world we're about to explore. There's also a cute teensie on the left side, welcoming?? you to the game with its hat.

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10. Super Metroid

During the SNES era, gamers weren't anticipating a cinematic introduction to the game. However, Super Metroid features tense music and neat transitions of scenes that feature?? the creepy sci-fi world of the game. It then reveals a Metroid trapped within a pipe with the machinery flickering in green light. It's genuinely creepy to see fallen bodies next to the machine as well. It's a perfect introduction to this game.

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9. Psychonauts

Double Fine is a developer known for its wild worlds, game concepts, and characters. This menu follows that same idea. One of the strangest (and coolest) is in Psychonauts, in which you're Raz running around a brain. The concept of the game is that you're trying to fix the issues of a person by infiltrating their mind. It's a clever main menu concept for a game like this and is certainly unique. I also love Double Fine's record-based main menu design in Brutal Legend, but Psychonauts just edges it out.

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8. L.A. Noire

This may be a controversial pick, but L.A. Noire has a unique menu design that complements the subject matter. You get the old-fashioned black-and-white styling mixed in with a shadowy figure of the text. The light shone from the car gives a wonderful effect o??n the brick wall, adding to the atmosphere of the scene. While it can be annoying to have a gentleman walking in and out of the menu, it's certainly an interesting take on this classic gaming feature that we haven't seen before.

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7. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Yes, this is a simplistic menu for such a huge RPG like Starfield, but it more than makes up for it with t??he theme alone. You hear a majestic choir and triumphant orchestra calling to you. It gets you pumped for the adventure you're about to have. The logo also looks iconic amongst the white mist and the black background.

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6. Pokemon Red & Blue

Despite the limited power of the Game Boy, Pokemon Red & Blue still had amazing intros and menus. You see two Pokemon fighting it out in the intro underscored by a memorable theme song. It then constantly switches between the different Pocket Monsters you'll find in the game like Snorlax, Mankey, and Ditto. It's simple but "super effective"at introducing us to the world of Pokemon. 

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5. Xenoblade Chronicles

The Xenoblade Chronicles title screen is super simple. You see the Monado sword stuck in the ground all by itself. However, the beauty of the world surrounds us as day turns to night. You also see the shine of the metal blade against ??the sunlight, which is a nice to??uch. The Monado also glows in the dark as the stars shine brightly above. The emotional music is engrossing as you simply stare at this stunning scene. This is one of the best main menu screens just from how stunning it is.

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4. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

I know, many say that Ocarina of Time's menu screen is better, but the one from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess holds more prestige for me. You see Link riding Epona valiant??ly across the Bridge of Eldin? and the wilderness of Hyrule. In the background is a somewhat creepy choir singing the main theme of the game. Then, the intro transitions to Wolf Link who howls to a strange golden wall in the distance.

You also have a hint of the "Midna's Theme" from the music, hinting at how prevalent your partner will be in the plot and gam??eplay. You're then left with a feeling of dread as you only have the sound of wind to keep you company. It's a brilliant main menu that pulls you into the intended darker atmosphere of the game.

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3. Kingdom Hearts 2

Possibly with the prettiest main menu theme ever "Dearly Beloved," Kingdom Hearts 2 has one of the best intros in gam?ing history. The credits roll and the music begins to build up. As you begin to see Sora emerge into the title screen, you hear the ha?rp play and the bass strings refer to the protagonist.

It sounds ?like an orchestra prepping to play before a concert occurs. It then calms down for a brief second until the full menu appears. Then, the piano begins to play the main melody, and each wonderful instrument of the piece blends together in a truly "beloved" way.

Seeped with the sound of waves from Sora's home world Destiny Islands, you remember where the end goal lies. The blue streak to the right also has a wave-like gradient to it. I just noticed this as I was writing, but the color of the streak goes from navy to turquoise to yellow lik???e a beach. Neat!

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2. Persona 5

Persona 5 has so much style behind its UI and graphical ingenuity. However, the main menu stands ??out as well. The introduction of the train pop art and then the Phantom Thieves at a stop is fantastic. I love the striking red and white style as you see the trains? beside them rush on either side.

The music gi??ves you the depiction that this is going to be a cool, suave adventure. When Futaba gets off her seat, you'll see a graffiti mark on her seat. It also shows Haru in the back, showing her more shy side.

Personally, I prefer the calmer nature of this scene to the more energetic Persona 5 Royal's, but it's a personal taste, for sure. It gives a more underground feel that ??matches the Phantom Thieves better.

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1. Mega Man 2

Admittedly, I haven't grown ??up during the NES era, but my goodness, this is one of the greatest main menu screens in a game, bar none. You start with an overview of the city with a brief summary of the story. The music begins slow and pleasant, but as the camera moves up the skyscraper, the music gets faste?r until you get one of the most badass menu themes ever. You can't help but get hyped.

You see Megaman's hair waving in the air as he readies himself for his tough adventure. When you choose a selection, he then teleports away. Despite having better technology today, this main menu still stands as one of the most epic. Let's set out and d??efeat each of the bosses (or at least hope we can). T?his is one of the best main menu screens ever just due to the excitement I get every time I boot it up.

The post Top 10 best menu screens in games, ranked appeared first on Destructoid.

Trash Can Children

The Garbage Pail Kids are a bit out of my wheelhouse. I don’t particularly like gross-out humor. Even some of the stuff in Ren & Stimpy is too much for me. I respect gross-out humor. I think it’s probably healthy to find amusement in bodily functions that we all experience but, for some reason, choose to demonize?. That doesn’t change things, though. It doesn’t tickle the atrophied humor ??muscle in my brain.

Except for butts. Butts are forever funny.

However, the NES is part of my domain. So when Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum arrived, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to pick up a physical copy of it for NES. To be clear, I bought this myself. When I covered Blazing Rangers back in February, First Press ??Games had offered me a copy of it. I’m not sure Iam8bit even has my contact information, and I’m too polite and shy to actually ask for anyone for review copies.

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Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum (NES, Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)
Developer: Retrotainment Games, Digital Eclipse
Publisher: iam8bit
Released: October 25, 2022
MSRP: $9.99 (Digital), $79.99 (NES)

If you’re unfamiliar with the Garbage Pail Kids, it was an attempt to take the Cabbage Patch Kids and turn it into the most unwholesome, disgusting mutation possible. They were chiefly a series of?? trading cards, but th?ey eventually spun off into a movie that has been described as �?a href="//www.imdb.com/title/tt0093072/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the worst ever�?and a cartoon series that got canceled before it even hit the air. My husband says the cartoon is “interesting�?but that I “definitely wouldn’t like it.�?/p>

Garbage Pail Kids? went away for the �?0s but came back in the �?0s, as you can’t keep a good property down. They’re ?the perfect storm of parents hating them and kids loving them that made them memorable.

There was never a video game spin-off of the property, but there probably should have been, so Retrotainment Games got the license and went straight to correcting history. They created Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum for the NES hardware. Iam8bit picked it up as publisher, and la?st year it hit consoles and PC with the help of Digital Eclipse. Now, it’s been pressed ?to an NES cartridge, which feels absolutely poetic.

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Butts are forever funny

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum is a platformer that feels like a mash-up of a lot of different games while also being its own thing. You can swap between four characters at any time, which feels sort of like Little Samson or Bucky O’Hare. However, the levels, while linear, have some exploration elements to them, which prevents the game from just feeling like a clone. It still feels like a license-focused platformer but in a more favorable sense. Like Duck Tales.

Also, like Duck Tales, you get to select the order of levels. There are six in total that cover a range of locations and time peri??ods. Your team of grotesque children doesn’t earn any new skills as they progress, so the order you tackle them is completely up to you.

The children themselves are diverse. They provide the skills of melee, jumping, projectiles, and also projectiles, but these projectiles arc downward. They each have their own health bar, but the different characters are one of the low-points of Garbage Pail Kids�?/i> design.