Nightshade (NES)

If you’ve heard of late release NES curio Nightshade, it’s probably by that name and not its full title, Nightshade Part 1: The Claws of Sutekh. Australian studio Beam Software clearly had big plans for this aggressively quirky point-and-click adventure/fighting game hybrid. They even managed to get industry giant Konami to take on publishing duty via their Ultra Games label. Sadly, the sequels promised by that snazzy subtitle were not to be. I don’t blame Beam or Konami for this, necessarily, as few 8-bit games were selling all that well circa 1992, especially downright weird ones. In any case, Nightshade’s one and only game appearance endures as a singular experience within the massive NES library.

When Sutekh, Metro City’s reigning crime lord, manages to kill off veteran superhero Vortex, nothing stands between him and total domination. Nothing, that is, except for Nightshade, trenchcoated crime fighting alter-ego of mild-mannered encyclopedia researcher Mark Gray. Too bad old Nightshade isn’t off to the greatest of starts. As the game opens, Sutekh’s tied him to a chair next to a lit bomb. If he doesn’t think fast, his adventure could be over before it’s began.

With its moody film noir-inspired opening music and cut scene, you might expect Nightshade to be quite the grim, gritty affair. Well, joke’s on you, because literally everything that follows is simply bananas; a full-blown pulp/comic hero parody in the vein of The Tick or The Venture Bros. A pretty good one, too, with plenty of sarcastic item descriptions, pop culture references, and recurring gags like various citizens of Metro City constantly mangling poor Nightshade’s name, dubbing him Lampshade among other things.

This slapstick sense of humor extends to the game mechanics proper. Each time Nightshade runs out of health, Sutekh show up to stick him in another overly elaborate death trap akin to the one from the opening scene. If Nightshade can manage to escape using a combination of quick thinking and accurate timing, he’s free to continue his mission. Otherwise, it’s game over and all progress is lost. The game also ends if he should reach the fifth and final trap, from which there is no escape. In other words, figuring out how to foil the traps gives you access to four extra lives.

Most of your play time as Nightshade is spent wandering the city streets in a point-and-click adventure mode, summoning a cursor as needed to examine, pick up, and use various objects, speak to NPCs, and so on. Interfaces like this were rare on the NES, although not entirely unheard-of. See Maniac Mansion or Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. What sets Nightshade apart is its combat, which uses a side-view beat-’em-up style. Although the contrast between the slow-paced, methodical exploration and the frantic brawls is theoretically exciting, I found the battles to be the game’s weakest aspect. Nightshade is slow on foot and has a high, floaty jump. Enemies tend to both be faster and enjoy greater hit priority on their attacks. True, most have exploitable weaknesses that can be mastered eventually, but the learning process is a painful one due to the sharply limited lives and healing resources. Needing to restart the game from scratch multiple times, redoing the early point-and-click segments over and over almost soured me on the game as a whole.

Almost. In the end, I’m glad I persevered through Nightshade’s mediocre fights and resulting early frustration. I was rewarded with a wild, witty escapade that absolutely merited more success than it found. On the plus side, some of its DNA did carry over to lead designer Paul Kidd’s 1993 follow-up project, Shadowrun for the Super Nintendo.

Snake’s Revenge (NES)

Compromised as it was, the 1988 NES port of Metal Gear fared quite well in Western markets. So much so that Konami greenlit a sequel, Snake’s Revenge, to be released exclusively in Europe and North America in 1990. They famously didn’t ask original lead designer Hideo Kojima to participate in the project at all, leaving him to learn of its existence via office chatter. Really, it’s a wonder the guy stuck it out there as long as he did.

Snake’s Revenge has since gone on to develop a reputation as a truly dire game, particularly among fans of the mainline Kojima Metal Gear titles. When it’s remembered at all, it’s as that weird bastard installment so bad it got stricken from the official series canon. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of thing I can’t resist seeing for myself. I freely confess that my recent coverage of the first NES Metal Gear was merely a formality intended to spare me the awkwardness of discussing the two out of order.

At first blush, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. The opening is practically a straight redux of the last one. Iconic super soldier Solid Snake and a couple of his obviously doomed buddies are airdropped into the jungle and tasked with finding and destroying another world-threatening Metal Gear tank before some terrorists can use it to launch nukes. Gameplay, too, seemed almost identical. You guide Snake around various enemy installations, doing your best to avoid cameras, traps, and the absurdly narrow eyelines of patrolling guards. In addition to avoiding detection whenever possible, you’re expected to slowly amass the arsenal of weapons and miscellaneous utility items needed to progress. Rescuing allied prisoners and interrogating bad guys should also be a priority, since this is how you’ll increase Snake’s level (or rank, as it’s called here), lengthening his health bar and increasing the number of items he can lug around. If you find yourself stuck, you can try contacting one of your teammates on the radio. You shouldn’t expect brilliance from these guys, though I will give Konami credit for doing a marginally better job with the English dialog this time around. I didn’t notice any “the truck have started to move” caliber blunders.

So nothing too amazing in this implementation, but nothing that wasn’t also a staple of the previous game, either. What gives? Two words: Side-scrolling. Yes, Snake’s Revenge attempts to spice up the 8-bit overhead Metal Gear formula by adding, of all things, rudimentary action-platforming sections. Looking at still shots, you could be forgiven for thinking they have potential. Snake and his foes are represented by big, detailed sprites and it’s certainly not like Konami hadn’t hit plenty of home runs in this field before. No dice, though. To say these interludes are no Castlevania or Contra is putting it milder than mayo on white bread. They’re slow, stiff, and overall clumsy, likely some of the worst action segments Konami’s ever produced. Do they handle as bad as, say, Dragon’s Lair or The Terminator for NES? Hell, no! Clearing that low bar ultimately means less than you’d hope, however.

So there you have it: Snake’s Revenge is what happens when you copy the blueprint of Metal Gear’s already watered-down console incarnation and throw in a poorly realized gimmick to serve as the rotten cherry on top. The result is hardly impressive, with the lone exception of an intense score by composer Tsutomu Ogura of Adventures of Bayou Billy fame. I’m not surprised it prompted Kojima to push for a chance to set things right by making his own wholly distinct Metal Gear 2 for MSX computers, which debuted later the same year and was met with considerably greater acclaim. All that said, I wouldn’t exactly call this complete trash. Not when entertainment software war crimes like the two I just mentioned are lurking on the same platform. It looks and sounds fine and is very much playable. Just don’t expect it to make your snake solid, if you catch my drift. But, hey, at least we get to actually blow up Metal Gear in this one.

Ghoul School (NES)

I had the pleasure of attending the 2023 Portland Retro Gaming Expo earlier this month. There, I sat in on a panel that included veteran Atari, PC, NES, and SNES game designer/programmer/producer Garry Kitchen. It got me thinking that I should cover some of his work one of these days. Well, it just so happens that he was on the team that created Ghoul School, the sole NES title I’m aware of that’s actually set on Halloween night. Serendipity!

Developed by Imagineering and published exclusively in North America by Electro Brain back in 1992, Ghoul School is a side-view action-adventure that sees you controlling spikey-haired teenager Spike O’Hara, a moniker that really tells you all you need to know about the sense of humor on display throughout. Spike, a senior at Cool School, was taking a shortcut through the local cemetery on his way to class one Halloween Eve when he stumbled onto a human skull emitting what the manual terms “psychedelic glow.” Respecting neither the sanctity of the dead nor his own health, he promptly scooped it up and brought it along to show his anatomy teacher. That Halloween night, a mysterious storm rolls in, his cheerleader crush Samantha Pompom gets abducted, and Spike has to muster all his courage (and/or hormone-fueled recklessness) to save her from the host of monsters inhabiting the rechristened Ghoul School.

For a story about high schoolers, it sure reads like something for the kiddie set. As turns out, lead designer Scott Marshall originally intended Ghoul School to be at least a tad edgier, with gruesomer undead enemies and a “gangrene meter” in place of Spike’s health bar to represent his creeping zombification. Time crunch and a lack of communication behind the scenes resulted in this tamer Saturday morning cartoon take on horror instead. Still befitting the season, I suppose. They can’t all be bloodbaths. Marshall also intended Spike to be black, however, and that particular forced change is obviously far less defensible. If only gaming history was all fun and games, eh?

Anyway, I’ve buried the lede enough: Ghoul School is far from a famous entry in the NES library, and those who do know it tend to treat it as a laughingstock. Graphics that would perhaps have been passable circa 1986 have a borderline outsider art crudity to them this far into the hardware’s life cycle. The music is droning and loops quite quickly. Worst of all, the action is stiff and tedious. Spike moves and attacks similarly to Link in Zelda II. If Link couldn’t crouch, stab above or below him, or modify his jump arc in mid-air, that is. Given Spike’s inability to duck, the halls of Ghoul School are naturally packed with obnoxious, fast-moving enemies too short to hit. Why wouldn’t they be? Any sort of combat is a rote chore if you’re lucky, a chain of cheap hits ping-ponging you into oblivion if you’re not.

The level design is no great shakes, either. The school itself is essentially a network of numbered hallways that look exactly alike. These hallways are dotted with doors, the majority of which lead to classrooms that are empty except for a monster or two guarding a health-replenishing apple. In other words, roughly 80% of the doors you’ll come across contain nothing essential and can be skipped. Your goal is, in essence, to find the rare door that leads not to a generic classroom, but to a specific named location such as the library, gym, or cafeteria. All of the key items are located in these special rooms. The rest are padding. Ugly, janky padding. You aren’t even permitted breaks from the pain, as there’s no battery save or password feature.

Sad to say, my opinion on Ghoul School is mostly in line with the popular consensus. It’s a notably clumsy attempt at an exploratory platformer that’s only spared the indignity of being the system’s worst by virtue of the fact that Dr. Chaos exists. Despite it all, though, I did find it oddly fascinating. The fantasy of battling your way through a typical American high school on Halloween, fending off zombies and walking eyeballs with “weapons” like a wet towel and rancid cafeteria sandwich is novel and certainly evokes that spooky-silly Halloween spirit. It’s surprisingly straightforward in terms of progression requirements as well. The lone bit that seemed unfairly cryptic to me was determining the method for reaching the roof via the elevator (keep holding up at the fourth floor). Litany of artistic and design sins aside, Ghoul School’s heart is in the right place…guarding the door to the last boss.

Alien 3 (Game Boy)

The cinematic Alien 3 opened to a decidedly cold reception in 1992. Its production was riddled with problems and the final result left audiences enamored with the previous two installments feeling largely unsatisfied, due in no small part to the way multiple fan favorite characters were unceremoniously dispatched off-screen. Even its director, the celebrated David Fincher, has disowned it, later saying of his debut feature, “…to this day, no one hates it more than me.” Ouch.

If you think that’s bad, the movie’s astounding eight contemporary licensed games have arguably fared worse. Seven of them are underwhelming side-view action-platformers in which heroine Ellen Ripley must fight her way through a sequence of maze-like stages in an attempt to rescue all the human hostages from the rampaging aliens before time runs out. They weren’t unplayable messes by any means, but neither were they remotely interesting from a design perspective. The lone, strange exception was Alien 3 for the Game Boy, a tense overhead action-adventure by British outfit Bits Studios that delivered the handheld’s first and only true survival horror title over three years before Resident Evil coined the term.

As with all the other adaptations, GB Alien 3 heavily modifies the film’s plot to allow for more action and a less downbeat ending. Ripley crash lands on the remote prison planet Fury 161 and must find a way to eliminate the aliens that arrived with her as stowaways and escape before representatives of the corrupt Weyland-Yutani Corporation arrive to take her into custody. That’s no idle threat, either, since game progression is tied to a timer that begins counting down from the instant your playthrough begins. The first aliens will always appear roughly seven minutes in, for example, hopefully giving you sufficient time to arm Ripley in preparation. If you still haven’t managed to exterminate all the rampaging xenomorphs and their queen before Weyland-Yutani hits the scene, it’s an instant game over (man!). Given that you can complete the whole affair in around half an hour once you understand the goals and the rather compact layout of Fury 161, however, you’re much more likely to run out of lives than time.

On the subject of lives, Ripley has four. There’s no way to earn more, nor is there any continue option once they’re all exhausted. This makes the limited number of first aid kits scattered around the prison a precious resource to be conserved whenever possible. Ammunition is similarly finite, and exhausting the planet’s entire supply prior to eliminating the alien menace can also end a run prematurely. All this sounds like it would make for one brutal ordeal. Thankfully, the sheer brevity of the adventure prevents all these limitations from becoming insurmountable. When an attempt does end prematurely, you’ll still have learned a lot at the cost of just a few minutes.

When Alien 3 is firing on all cylinders, it makes for a surprisingly credible horror gaming experience in light of its release date and the Game Boy’s technical limitations. Exploring the claustrophobic corridors for key cards and other mandatory progression items, dodging or blasting monsters as they appear, and carefully managing your limited health and inventory is all grand, edge-of-your-seat fun. The only part I’m no fan of is, believe it or not, the damned fans. Ripley is regularly required to traverse air ducts linking the four main sections of the prison complex. These ducts all contain large fans that will suck her in for an instant kill unless she can disable or redirect them by flipping switches in the correct order. Making it through isn’t so bad once you’ve committed the solutions to memory. Getting there is going to require a lot of trial and error, though. That is to say, multiple deaths and probably a game over or three. Would you believe that all my deaths except one came not at the teeth and claws of acid-blooded phallic space bugs, but from comic mishaps with the prison’s absurdly impractical ventilation system? I’d go so far as to say that the game as a whole would be trivially easy if all you had to worry about was the actual aliens! If that seems backwards to you, you’re not alone.

As long as one can forgive its short length and overreliance on dull fan puzzles, Alien 3 stands out as a unique and fascinating Game Boy exclusive in the guise of yet another chunk of disposable LJN-branded shovelware. It’s a worthy, if hardly seminal early contribution to the survival horror genre and my pick for the greatest Alien 3 game ever made. For what that’s worth.

Metal Gear (NES)

Love it or hate it, the Metal Gear series is a cultural force to be reckoned with. Millions of gamers the world over are acquainted with ex-Konami designer Hideo Kojima’s singular brainchild. Between its influential stealth action focus, its blending of real military history with speculative sci-fi, and its mountains of intricate and frankly bizarre lore, there’s nothing else quite like it.

Back in 1988, however, all me and my fellow North American NES fanatics knew of Metal Gear came from a single enigmatic cartridge of the same name published under Konami’s Ultra Games shell label. We had no idea that it actually represented a heavily compromised (perhaps butchered) port of Kojima’s original version, which had debuted on Japanese MSX2 home computers the year prior. In spite of the many clumsy alterations and omissions Metal Gear suffered during its conversion to Nintendo hardware, its unconventional take on the overhead action-adventure formula still won it a substantial following. Instead of collecting swords or magical doohickeys, super-soldier protagonist Solid Snake slowly accumulated an arsenal that included various firearms, a gas mask, and a land mine detector. When in need of a pick-me-up, he scarfed down canned field rations rather than healing potions. Most of Snake’s conversations with NPCs take place not in person, but via a radio you get to manually tune. This isn’t to say that the distinction between Metal Gear and something like The Legend of Zelda was purely skin-deep. Mangled as they were, the trademark stealth mechanics were just barely functional enough to be intriguing.

Now here I am, 35 years later, seeking to answer one question: Is the bowdlerized Metal Gear experience of my youth actually worth a damn now that translated renditions of the MSX2 game are available via both official and unofficial channels? In short, nope! Harsh? Maybe. But this most recent mission to infiltrate Outer Heaven and eliminate the threat to world peace posed by the mobile all-terrain nuclear weapons platform Metal Gear only highlighted what a lackluster take on the concept it is.

Much has been made of the NES Metal Gear’s absurd translation “Uh-oh! The truck have started to move!”) and the fact that the climactic encounter with the titular laser shooting WMD itself was cut. In other words, Metal Gear couldn’t be bothered to appear in this Metal Gear game. The larger issue for me, though, is easily the lack of care paid to implementing the stealth component that was intended to be the game’s core feature. Combat is meant to be risky and ideally avoided whenever possible. Accordingly, almost every screen on the MSX2 Metal Gear can be traversed without alerting the guards to Snake’s presence. Assuming the player is patient, skillful, and willing to learn enemy movement patterns, that is. Not so on the NES, where the designers were even fool enough to have you appear on top of enemies during some screen transitions. Avoiding detection is so often flat-out impossible that it twists what should be a tense, high stakes game of cat and mouse into a tedious clown show. Blasting away everything in your path and gulping down rations as needed to soak the damage shouldn’t work. At least not for extended periods. Here, it’s business as usual.

With its garbled script, lackluster ending sequence, and thoroughly bungled sneaking, it’s no wonder Metal Gear’s creator has disowned this tragic interpretation of his work. Strip away those elements, and all you’re left with is a neat yet unfulfilled premise bundled with some catchy music and the usual clunky menus and cryptic progression requirements of any given mid-’80s action-adventure title. It’s not fully unplayable, but I’d recommend most similar efforts on the platform over it, including ones like Konami’s own Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest that I otherwise don’t rate particularly high. I feel confident concluding that its primary value today is as a nostalgia trip for NES enthusiasts of a certain age. Everyone else should take it for the cautionary tale it is and look to the MSX2 release for their fun.

Adventure (Atari 2600)

The venerable Atari 2600/VCS will always hold a special place in my heart as my introduction to home gaming. Yet despite my love for the system and for the action-adventure genre, I’d never invested any real time into Warren Robinett’s 1980 masterpiece Adventure, a work with profound significance for both. Robinett’s forward-thinking attempt to adapt the essence of early text-based PC adventure titles like Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork to the comparatively limited memory and input methods of the 2600 is frequently cited as the first action-adventure video game. Its primary rival for that honor is John Dunn’s Superman, another Atari release that hit store shelves in 1979. I’d argue that Robinett deserves the nod in any case, however, as Superman was spun-off from his early Adventure prototype. All that said, I never owned a copy in the ’80s, so it’s high time I gave it its due.

Your goal in Adventure is to scour a fantasy Kingdom is search of an Enchanted Chalice that’s been stolen away by an Evil Magician (who never appears, sadly). When I say “your goal,” I mean it. There’s no name or description provided for Adventure’s player character, who appears in-game as a Pong paddle-esque moving square with no human features. Are you a man? A woman? A knight? A good wizard? In the end, you’re controlling whoever or whatever you please, so knock yourself out. When older gamers talk about how the hobby required imagination back in the day, this is exactly the sort of thing they mean.

At around thirty individual screens in size, the Kingdom isn’t a large one by the standards of later efforts like The Legend of Zelda or the 2600’s own Pitfall! This was 1980, though, when any form of multi-screen playfield was positively outré. For proof of this, look no further than Adventure’s manual, which devotes space to coaching players on the concept of screen transitions: “To move from one area to an adjacent area, move ‘off’ the television screen….” Amazing the sorts of things we take for granted, no?

In a similar hindsight-informed vein, it’s easy to scratch one’s head (or laugh) over Adventure’s presentation. You can only pick up and use one of the game’s seven total items at any given time. There’s no text, no menus, no music, and only very limited sound effects reserved for important events such as picking up and dropping things or slaying dragons with your sword. Said dragons famously resemble overgrown ducks and the sword a little yellow arrow. Superficially, the game gives every indication of being too crude and basic to bother with today. Strange, then, that I ended up spending the better part of two solid hours playing and replaying it.

Yes, as soon I accepted that Adventure really does look like this and dove in with the intent of finding that Chalice, I was having a blast. Stumbling through dark mazes, running away from dragons, puzzling out how to use the bridge and magnet to good effect, and cursing the damnable item stealing bat that always seemed to swoop in at the worst possible moment to snatch away a vital tool. It helps that there are three difficulty modes available. The first is a simplified introduction where all you need to do is stroll a short distance, grab the Chalice, and return it to the starting castle. The second has more mandatory item usage and requires you to visit essentially every location in the Kingdom. The third is where things get really interesting, being an early example of an item/enemy location randomizer and thereby serving as the source of much of Adventure’s replay value. I wouldn’t quite say that it has the same legs as most of its bigger and more complex descendants, but it remains a perfectly fine way to kill an hour or two, goofy ducks and all.

Of course, one can’t discuss Adventure without mentioning the pixelated elephant in the room: The storied Easter egg. Like many of Atari’s programmers at the time, Robinett was incensed over management’s refusal to credit them or pay them any royalties on their often million-selling hits. Adventure would be the last game he completed for the company before quitting over this very issue. As a final act of defiance, he surreptitiously included what he refers to as his signature, a secret screen sporting a set of giant flashing letters proclaiming “Created by Warren Robinett.” Contrary to popular myth, this wasn’t the first such signature to be hidden away in a game. Instances from as far back as 1977 have been unearthed. These earlier examples generally weren’t discovered until decades later, however, while Adventure’s was made public hot on the heels of its release and the method for finding it was widely circulated in print publications of the time. It thus became the first Easter egg to actually impact gamer culture. Between this and the fact that it inspired Atari’s Steve Wright to coin the term “Easter egg” to describe it, it’s no wonder the myth surrounding Robinett’s little electronic middle finger has endured.

As for me, I found it surprisingly fun trying to pull the trick off. In gameplay terms, it’s definitely tougher than finding the Chalice and I might even liken the quest to view the egg to a fourth difficulty setting. Doing it for the first time on real hardware was also satisfying in a way that’s difficult to put into words. I felt as if I was forging a living connection with the deepest roots of video gaming. Sure, it isn’t technically the first game secret, just as Adventure itself might not technically be the first action-adventure. But perhaps, deep down, the heart and soul of the hobby share much in common with the nebulous realms of fantasy Adventure still plies so well.

Alwa’s Awakening (NES)

I’m always on the lookout for promising modern games that will run natively on my vintage consoles, be they hacks that add fresh content to classic hits or completely original works. Alwa’s Awakening is one of the latter: A 2022 NES conversion of the 2017 PC release by independent studio Elden Pixels. Am I glad I looked into this one! As a splendidly polished, drop-dead gorgeous spin on the Metroid style exploratory platformer, it couldn’t be more up my alley.

Awakening follows an everyday video gaming girl named Zoe, who gets transported to the fantasy land of Alwa and charged with taking down Vicar, an evil being who’s harnessed the power of four stolen magic ornaments to conquer and subjugate the populace. In other words, it’s your typical “retrieve the shiny MacGuffins to save the world” setup. While that’s generally good enough for any NES game, it seems like a missed opportunity to also have Zoe be a silent protagonist. The fish-out-of-water element could have been played up in dialog to fine effect.

Thankfully, the mechanics and level design here more than make up for the lackluster storytelling. Awakening’s main method of differentiating itself from the bog standard Metroid clone is to lean into puzzle-platforming. If you’ve played the likes of Solomon’s Key or Solstice, you know what I’m getting at. Heck, Zoe’s signature block creation power and her purple cloak come across as obvious callbacks to those two games specifically. There’s even a location in Alwa called Solstice Mountain, in case you didn’t get the reference already. What all this translates to is a heavy emphasis on using Zoe’s small selection of movement tools (mainly temporary bubble platforms and the aforementioned blocks) in clever and skillful ways to traverse a series of increasingly hazardous screen layouts. Combat is downplayed in favor of this movement mastery, with most non-boss enemies being slow and easily dispatched by one or two swipes of Zoe’s staff.

The majority of the baddies may be pushovers, but that doesn’t mean the game itself is. Quite the opposite! The single most common issue this type of exploration-based action title suffers from in my opinion is a lack of moment-to-moment challenge. My avatar is often highly resilient, with little to fear from either foes or the environment. This leads to a lot of lazily drifting about the map with no underlying tension to keep me engaged. It’s the major reason I rarely revisit the Castlevania franchise’s RPG entries, for example, despite their massive popular acclaim. Alwa’s Awakening keeps you on your toes throughout with its three-hit life bar and abundance of water pits and spikes, both of which spell instant death. Daunting as that may sound, the design as a whole is eminently fair. Unlimited lives, frequent checkpoints, and spot-on controls take much of the sting out of individual failures, freeing you to hone your technique without fuming over unjust punishments. I was pushing a hundred deaths by the end of my first playthrough and still loving every minute of it.

Alwa’s Awakening very nearly has it all, including stellar pixel art and animation, a stirring soundtrack courtesy of Robert Kreese, and a handy auto-map feature. Apart from its routine plot and a shabby bonus ending that honestly isn’t worth the extra time to unlock, it stands as one of the finest action-adventure experiences available for the NES, be it now or in the platform’s heyday. It has a sequel, Alwa’s Legacy, that utilizes a 16-bit visual aesthetic. If Elden Pixels should ever decide to give Legacy the same treatment as its predecessor by porting it to the Super Nintendo or Genesis, I’ll be first in line to give it a go.

Higemaru Makaijima – Nanatsu no Shima Daibōken (Famicom)

Way back in 1984, a little up-and-coming software studio called Capcom debuted their third game in Japanese arcades: Pirate Ship Higemaru . This was their entry in the crowded overhead maze action genre popularized by Namco’s Pac-Man. Higemaru stars a sailor by the name of Momotaru, who must fight off endless throngs of pirates by hurling barrels at them. Said barrels make up the interior walls of the mazes, inviting comparisons to Sega’s Pengo and its focus on pushable ice blocks as weapons. “Higemaru” literally translates to “beard round,” a reference to the oddly spherical bearded pirates Momotaru clashes with.

Three years was a long time in ’80s game design terms, however, so it’s not surprising that the arcade Higemaru’s 1987 Famicom sequel ditched the original format in favor of a sprawling Zelda-inspired epic. Thus, we have Higemaru Makaijima – Nanatsu no Shima Daibōken (“Beard Round Hell Island – Great Adventure of Seven Islands”), a deeply flawed adventure that retains just enough of that signature Capcom charm to not be a total loss. In fact, it’s so nearly good that it almost got an NES release under the title Makai Island. The apparently complete Makai Island prototype ROM later surfaced online, making Higemaru Makaijima one of the few Famicom exclusives with an official English localization.

As the subtitle spells out, Momotaro’s new goal is to explore a chain of seven mysterious islands in search of a legendary treasure. His old foes the Higemaru pirates also return and are joined by a whole menagerie of new baddies. It’s a promising setup with a rather spotty implementation. For starters, all the islands are locked at the start. Each requires its own key. Keys are obtained by sailing around until you stumble across an anchored pirate ship. Board it and defeat the crew to win the key. It doesn’t sound too annoying when put that way, but the frustrations you’ll encounter are legion. Momotaro’s ship is achingly slow. There’s no way to know (without cheating) where the vessel you’re searching for is located. Once you do finally obtain a key, there’s no indication what island it unlocks. Factor in the need to repeat this process for every island and the lack of a viable map feature and you have a game that seemingly doesn’t want you playing it! The sheer amount of time you can spend wandering aimlessly over the same small set of drab overworld tiles listening to the same gratingly jaunty music loop is a brick wall many players are bound to bounce right off.

At least things pick up considerably once you do manage to reach land. The core gameplay is nearly identical to Pirate Ship Higemaru’s, except with the ability to scroll the screen and roam in search of items and the island’s boss. Each landmass consists of a few dozen screens with their own thematic identity and complement of unique hazards. Dokuro Island’s undead monsters and rivers of blood were a highlight for me, as was the Ghosts ‘n Goblins-based Hebi Island. The worst was the awkwardly named Cuck Island (Cook Island?) and its grotesquely racist “savage native” stereotypes. It’s a great pity that Japanese media has historically been slow to reject these sorts of depictions.

Momotaru himself is limited to jumping and tossing the barrels, rocks, and similar objects littering the landscape. While this is true to his previous appearance in Pirate Ship Higemaru, it constitutes another of Higemaru Makaijima’s major flaws. A game this length practically demands something in the way of satisfying character progression. New attacks, a level-up system, something. Momotaru is exactly the same from start to finish. Even the various items that raise his health total aren’t permanent. Lose those extra life points and they’re gone for good. Every other item is tied to quest progression and has no tangible effect on the combat. Mechanics originally created for a basic single-screen arcade game simply don’t have the legs to remain engaging for hours on end.

Oh, and how could I forget the cryptic Tower of Druaga style nonsense no mid-’80s adventure would be complete without? Although the main quest mostly plays fair, attaining the best ending requires you to find three extremely well-hidden crystals with no in-game hints whatsoever. Joy!

Reading over my thoughts so far, I’ve been coming down much harder on Higemaru Makaijima than I’d expected to. I should emphasize that the majority of its environments are fairly fun to explore, the (non-racist) sprite work is appealingly cute, and the soundtrack by Harumi Fujita has its high points. When you’re not meandering across the empty ocean in search of the next key or otherwise floundering about directionless, the feel of a rollicking high seas treasure hunt does shine through. Still, the overall experience is rough enough that the NES version’s cancellation seems wholly justified in hindsight. Capcom had no shortage of better stuff on deck and ready to launch in 1987. In other words, only the most patient and dedicated of Famicom deep cut enthusiasts need apply here.

Light Crusader (Genesis)

The crew of independent game developers at Treasure enjoy a sterling reputation among fans of the Sega Genesis. Their Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, and Alien Soldier are frequently hailed as three of the greatest action titles of the 16-bit era. Imagine my surprise, then, when 1995’s Light Crusader turned out to be the least impressive of the four isometric fantasy adventures I’ve experienced on the console to date. It lacks the delightful humor of Landstalker, the chunky beat-’em-up combat of Beyond Oasis, and even the arcadey run-and-gun thrills of Arcus Odyssey. As Treasure’s swan song on their debut platform, it’s the epitome of going out with a whimper instead of a bang.

What happened isn’t entirely clear, although interviews with the game’s staff do mention a troubled development cycle that had to be restarted from scratch at one point. In any case, the woefully generic quest of knight David to rescue kidnapped villagers from a six-level dungeon beneath the town of Green Row feels borderline unfinished in places and well below the usual standard of a Treasure production.

Of course, isometric projections in general could be tricky to implement well on older hardware, especially when platforming and other precision movement is called for, as it is here. The lion’s share of Light Crusader’s gameplay issues stem from this one factor. David’s primary attack, a pathetically short-range sword swipe, can be maddeningly tricky to connect with. You’ll often see his blade pass clear through enemy sprites to no avail. Lame duck bosses combined with David’s generous health bar and sprawling inventory of healing items ensure that battling remains quite easy as a rule, but I can’t escape the impression that all this leniency is really just a band-aid solution slapped on top of a deeper problem.

Worse, the impact of the dodgy hit detection is hardly limited to combat scenarios. Most of the puzzles in Light Crusader are variations on basic block pushing. Nothing too difficult in theory. That is until you realize that the slightest wrong move anywhere near some blocks will send them careening across the screen into unwinnable positions, forcing you to exit and re-enter the room to reset its objects. It wasn’t unusual for me to hit on the correct solution to a given setup immediately, only to then spend the next ten minutes mastering the pixel-perfect precision needed to execute it. Not fun.

On the plus side, Light Crusader’s treatment of magic is easily its best idea. I can detect the Gunstar Heroes influence in the way David can mix four basic elemental spells together in various ways to produce a total of fifteen useful effects. Water by itself is a minor healing spell. Add fire and it can cure poison. Water, fire, and earth create a temporary damage shield. It’s a joy to experiment with and enemies tend to drop plenty of element refill pickups, meaning that you don’t have to be overly conservative with your casting.

As much as I’d love to be able to give Light Crusader a strong endorsement based on pedigree alone, there’s no escaping the fact that its story and characters lack any vestige of personality and its challenges are trivial apart from a handful of persistent annoyances imposed by technical flaws. At the same time, however, I hesitate to deem it a total failure. I already praised its elegant magic system and the regal soundtrack by Aki Hata is a treat as well. It also doesn’t overstay its welcome at a brisk 6-8 hours. All-in-all, it’s a thoroughly average, middle-of-the-road work that happens to come with a legendary studio’s name attached. Worth a look if you appreciate this particular style of action-adventure and are willing to keep your expectations nice and modest. Playing it before those better games I cited certainly couldn’t hurt, either.

Cowboy Kid (NES)

Now that there’s a right purty end screen.

I’ve had me a run of good luck when it comes to Wild West games on the ole NES. Capcom’s port of their arcade shooter Gun.Smoke managed to better its source material and Konami’s Lone Ranger was a roundly satisfying, albeit occasionally frustrating, multi-format action-adventure. 1991’s Cowboy Kid (aka Western Kids in Japan) is . . . well, it’s certainly not the best of the lot, but it is very likely the strangest.

Why? Because what developer Pixel went ahead and did here was slap a set of spurs on the Mystical Ninja himself, Goemon, and call it a day. Loaded terms like “clone” and “rip-off” are all too common in gaming discourse, whether or not they’re truly justified. Cowboy Kid, however, cribs so closely from Konami’s design playbook that if you presented it to me as a ROM hack of the Famicom Ganbare Goemon 2 made by some dedicated fan, and I didn’t already know better, I’d absolutely believe it. This is some Krion Conquest magnitude copying by developer Pixel. Whether they had serious nerve, a total lack of shame, or both remains an open question.

The titular Cowboy Kid is Sam, a plucky lad that vows vengeance when his lawman father is murdered by the ruthless Scorpion Gang. Sam intends to bring these varmints to justice by following in dad’s footsteps and becoming the new sheriff in town. Assisting Sam is his Native pal Little Chief, who acts as the second character in two-player simultaneous mode, à la Ebisumaru. In other words, this is a Lone Ranger pastiche in addition to a Ganbare Goemon one.

Anyway, on to the gameplay. After completing a very short (approximately three screen) introductory stage, Sam lands the sheriff job and you’re taken to a level select screen where you’re given the choice of what order you want to pursue the six Scorpion Gang sub-bosses in. This one Mega Mannish touch is, sadly, Cowboy Kid’s closest brush with originality. It’s a bit of a beginner’s trap, too, since only two of the levels hold weapon upgrades in the form of guns that can replace your puny starting knife. So unless you’re going for some kind of self-imposed challenge run, do yourself a solid and tackle either the second or fifth bounties first.

As soon as the game’s first screen, Mystical Ninja fans will be having flashbacks. All stages but one (a rudimentary auto-scrolling horseback segment) open in or near a town setting, as seen from a three-quarters overhead view. Enemies representing a variety of exaggerated Western stereotypes continually emerge from the sides of the screen. These disposable miscreants can be dispatched with a single hit to earn a little cash, although some downright dreadful hit detection can make this easier said than done if you’re still relying on the knife. All the more reason to make obtaining a firearm your top priority.

Entering the many open doorways in town will reveal shops selling healing and defensive items (ones with exact Ganbare Goemon equivalents, naturally), mini-games (blackjack, a shooting gallery, etc.), hotels to rest up at, and the occasional clue or story progression event. The overarching goal is usually to discover the means of accessing the local boss’ hideout, put him down, and collect the price on his head. Do this six times and you’ll be able to square off against the Scorpion Master in a final showdown at the heart of his maze-like hideout.

Once you understand how it works, you’ll find that Cowboy Kid isn’t as long or as challenging as the titles it’s patterened on. With a couple hours of practice under my belt, I was able to whip through it in around thirty minutes. That’s roughly half the running time of its Famicom role models. I suppose this could constitute one debatable advantage over the Ganbare Goemon series proper. If you happen to find them too involved or difficult for your tastes and you’d prefer a simpler take, this should fit the bill.

For me, though, it was so much watered-down whiskey. Cowboy Kid has a few jokes here and there, but it’s nowhere near as consistently amusing or endearing as its inspiration. Graphics are serviceable at best. Level design is sparse to the point that it’s barely there in places. The action, while superficially very similar, isn’t as polished, owing mainly to the aforementioned poor hit detection. Cowboy Kid’s ace in the hole is an excellent score by composer Masaharu Iwata (Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Battle), whose early 8-bit work I’ve really come to appreciate in recent years.

Despite being the weakest and most expensive of the three NES cowboy games I’ve reviewed to date, not to mention what amounts to the inbred bastard cousin of one of my favorite franchises, Cowboy Kid is hardly the worst time you can have with the system. It is, all told, a completely playable, average quality release that also happens to be but a faint echo of something far greater. If nothing else, it’s worth firing up so that Mystical Ninja fans can get a load of what a Westernized (in more ways than one!) alternate universe version of Goemon and company’s adventures could have been. Sure is nice to feel like you’re living in the good timeline for a change, huh, pardner?