::Robosexual::

Castlevania

    I've had the pleasure of playing through Castlevania a few times in the last week or so, and I've determined it to be absolutely classic.  From the classic opening sequence to the incredibly difficult final levels, it's a masterwork of 8-bit gaming.  It's incredible to me that this game came out so early in the NES life cycle, yet it has some of the best graphics on the system.  Ripped tapestries, fallen balustrades, eerie turrets stabbing the sky in the background... and that's just the scenery.  The enemies are many and varied, as well - knights, zombies, mummies, medusa heads, midgets, fishmen, eagles, skeletal dragons, and more - all waiting to be demolished by your whip.  The whip itself is nice - with two levels of powerup it becomes your most lethal weapon.  The various secondary weapons are nice - dagger, holy water, boomerang, axe, and time-stopping watch - but the best choice is clear.  The axe is good for the first boss, the huge bat, and the boomerang is useful on level two, but the holy water is unsurpassed in power.  It freezes or destroys enemies it toches and burns them for extra hits while you reload.  With the triple powerup you're unstoppable.  The music is pretty hot, though I usually have it muted with my own stuff on.  You can find the first themesong here.  I've been playing it on emulator, and I've been weaning myself from the quicksave.  I've been doing the same thing with Megaman 2: start by undoing every mistake, then only the grievous ones, then only save at the beginning of a screen, then level... I'm slowly beginning to get my old NES skills back.  You need them in this game, but the secret is to go slowly but surely, and look before you leap.  You can beat the game like that - or you could, if Dracula weren't so freaking hard.

Elevator Action

    I believe this was a port of an arcade game, but why buy the cow when you can get the delicious NES-milk for free?  Elevator Action is a classic little shooter, simple, addictive, and damn hard.  I imagine your guy as a secret agent/spy type who makes a living of stealing secrets from men in black coats.  You grapple onto the top of the building, then begin making your way down, via stairs, escalator, or the elvator (obviously).  The black coats stream from every door and attempt to block your escape by the only means they know: bullets.  Lots of them.  At first there's not much to it - they take forever to draw and never shoot low, so while ducking you're golden.  However, past the second level they begin to wisen up and start ducking themselves, as well as pulling the trigger faster and more often.  You may be a super spy but one bullet puts you down, as will a fall from really any height.  This is the guy who rappelled down without a harness from a higher building.  His inability to drop even a single floor is a limitation you will curse.  You'll only face the one kind of enemy on your trek through the building but you will learn to fear him.  Eventually they are for all purposes bullet hoses and your only recourse is the turbo button.  You can hide in a door briefly or attempt to drop a light on their heads but these are only band-aids.  They've got your number, and your three lives are not going to get you past the 4th or 5th building without a lot of luck and probably a guardian angel (or genie).  That said, it is quite fun to play and easy to get into for anybody.  Bonus points for taking out a guy by squishing him with an elevator car.

Gunsmoke

    This was a classic game, made infinitely easier by using the NES Advantage, or another super-controller allowing for turbo. The basic setup is you’re a cowboy, referred to several times as “lone gunman,” who has arrived the town of Hicksville to kill a group of thugs who have been terrorizing the people – the Wingates. I remember the days when games were so few that you could get away with having one that was utterly generic in every way, unique only in that it was, for example, a cowboy game. Remember when if you wanted to play a baseball game, you loaded up the cartridge called “Baseball,” and not some pretender called “Ken Griffey Presents: MLB Season 2002 Extreme Innings!”? Anyway, while Gunsmoke may not have a very memorable plot or characters, its gameplay was innovative and consistently fun, and still is almost 20 years later. You kick your spurs down the main street of Hicksville (to start with) at a steady rate, and baddies come at you from all sides. As in the best games, there are only two things to do, really: move and shoot. A shoots up and to the right, B up and to the left, and both together fires straight ahead. This is an interesting way to set the controls and allows for some pretty complex tactics. The only problem was tapping the buttons fast enough, and that’s of course where turbo came to save the day. Occasionally you will happen upon a townsperson who wants to talk. With your accumulated points, you can buy new weapons, ammo, or a horse. The horse is fun, but I always feel bad when it gets shot so I try not to rely on it. You must collect a wanted poster, or buy one, before facing the boss you set out to kill at the beginning – the first, for instance, is Bandit Bill, bearing a rifle and a bounty of $10,000. You move through towns, canyons, deserts, Indian settlements, and forts, leaving a pile of bodies behind you – that is, if they didn’t flicker and disappear a moment after dying horribly at your hands. The opening music to this game, I’d like to add, is quite well composed and grim for a Nintendo game, and I recommend letting it play out completely before starting your rampage.

Bionic Commando

    There is no way I can put down all I feel about this game in one post.  Is this the best game ever?  I don't know.  But it's certainly in the top 5 NES games (a list which shifts and changes like mercury).  It's not as well-known as other best-ofs like Excitebike, Castlevania, SMB 2 and 3, etc, but the fact is it is quite as good and frequently better than these games.  Here's the gameplay premise: BC is a platform game in which you cannot jump - instead you are supplied with a bionic arm which you can shoot out in 5 directions.  You can grapple onto platforms, stun enemies, swing around, or just do it for the sound.  The commando of the title is a bit fragile, and while he can survive a fall from any height, a single bullet or even collision with an enemy will kill him (remember the days?).  The truth is, though, he is an incredible badass, and you have to get through some probably 12 levels and 8 or so neutral zones to complete your quest - nothing less than the toppling of a new nazi empire.
    The game in its original Japanese actually had Hitler in its name (Hitler no Fukkatsu) and swastikas adorning their official doors, banners, etc.  This was deemed a little edgy for the 6-12 American child market, so the nazis were recast as the Badds, and Hitler as "Master-D."  Interestingly, they did not remove his likeness or the incredibly violent end (wait for it!) to which he comes.
    In any case, the gameplay is incredibly fun - the stages are very diverse, from the mountainous tower of area 5 to the the Tora Bora-like tunnel network of area 8.  Furthermore, if your helicopter bumps into an enemy transport on the map, you are entered into an Ikari Warriors-like top-down action stage in which you must fight your way to the end.  There are many ways to go through the game; some stages are entirely optional, while others are necessary and have prerequisites (flares for the underground level).  You are rewarded with items on nearly every level - weapons, armor, items, new communicators (allowing you to view more hilarious engrish dialogue), and so on.
    My brother and I used to play through it in one sitting all the time - there is no save or password system so you have to do it all at once.  Now I play it through when I feel nostalgic at the coffee shop, and need to kill an hour or so.  Bionic Commando is one of the best games on the NES, and holds a special place in my heart for being one of the few games I actually got good at, memorized, and beat as a kid... over and over and over again.
    If you're a Bionic Commando fan already, you should check this site out for a trip: Bionic Commando Database

Super Mario Kart

    If Super Mario Kart were the only video game available in the world, I think we'd all be a little better off for it.  Now, I'm not talking about Mario Kart 64, or your Double Dash, or your Super Circuit, I'm talking original SNES Mario Kart.  I've had the same cartridge for probably 10 years and it's still as fun as the day we first got it, or rented it, or whatever.  The controls, in my humble opinion, have not been improved upon in the last decade, nor has the gameplay.  A few embellishments may have been made and a 4-player mode added, granted, but the fact is that the original is still the best, and by far.
    The Mode 7 quasi-3D effect used is perfect for the game, and the sprites are well made and animated.  The controls are simple and easy to learn, but I am still improving on my time trials 10 years later.  I've learned to powerslide better, when to avoid grass and when to cut across it, what the best lines are (still working on that)... like many SNES games, Super Mario Kart's simple graphics and straightforward controls belie the complexity contained within.  People who have had a long, tense  match in battle mode, map 4 probably, can vouch for the fact that strategies, counter-strategies, trickery, and trash talking are all integral to the game yet are to be found in no instruction manual.
    Who has not felt the sting of terror upon hearing the dread "Beeeoo" of a shell being fired unexpectedly?  Was it red or green?  Who has not made 4 perfect laps around bowser's castle 3, only to be passed by Princess and bumped into the lava, costing the race?  Who has not felt or envied the glory of popping all three of your opponent's balloons in less than a second?  I know I have.  It may be that Super Mario Kart has more fond memories and insane occurrences associated with it than any other game in my life.

                                       

     Now, you could buy a single xbox game or whatever for 50 or 60 dollars, OR you could buy a used SNES for 20, Mario Kart for 15, and an extra controller for 5.  Now put that extra 10 dollars into a six pack of cream soda and a bag of tortilla chips because you and your friends aren't going anywhere for a while.