Adventures In The Magic Kingdom (1990)
Where did I play it?
I honestly don’t remember. I suspect I borrowed it once from someone I didn’t know very well. I just barely remember playing it after borrowing it from someone very briefly.
Did I beat it as a child:
No, but I remember playing it and finishing some of the rides. I had fun with it I seem to remember.
This is a Disney Capcom game that has an innovative plot. You’re a kid walking around in an amusement park, and every ride is basically a level, likely inspired from rides of Disneyland. You pick up keys for every level you beat, keys that will lead to the magical castle. Most levels play very differently, some driving levels, some platform levels, a first-person space level and so on. The goal is to get 6 silver keys so you can enter the magical Castle in the middle of the park. There's also this quiz where you have to run around finding this dude who has trivia questions you have to ask. He'll also give you a silver key. The game deserves some credit for trying a different format than the average platformer, although its not executed great.
Later experiences:
Okay, so some of the levels are not easy to be fair. Some of the platform levels needed some actual practice and concentration for me, but the levels are is still quite short so within a couple of hours it was beaten, so to me its still an easy game compared to the average NES game. I couldn’t imagine someone spending months beating this game, and I’m pretty sure had I owned it as a child I probably would have beaten it.
Its too easy and too short, thats its problem, there's only 5 actual levels, but I quite like the idea behind the game. Especially in the 8-bit era it seems like an ambitious project to have different gameplay on every stage and to be able to walk around in an open-world and freely choose levels, and even do some trivia around the park. It does feels a bit unfinished and rushed to a degree though. When I collected all the silver keys I was sure there would be some final stage or another part of the game. For example a stage with Black Pete as a last boss or something inside the castle, similarly like you had to collect to open up the last castle in Super Mario Land 2 on Game Boy. No, the game was finished to my surprise.
My biggest criticism of if it is that its basically too short, and a good idea that wasn’t executed and explored as much as it potentially should have. For people who like short and easy Disney games like Duck Tales and Chip & Dale its definitely worth checking out though.
Difficulty:
3 out of 10
Tecmo World Wrestling (1989)
Where did I play it?
Neighbor-boy owned it. Played it quite a bit.
Did I beat it as a child?
Yes, brother! I can vaguely remember the neighbourboy I borrowed it from was really angry that I beat it before him. Even at a moment he wasn’t there, so he was not happy. Life is tough sometimes, I suppose? Quite silly to look back at now of course. Tecmo Cup Wrestling is a good game, and might be the best wrestling game on the system (although I never played Pro Wrestling, I hear that one is good too.) You can choose between different wrestlers, although you don't have the luxery of choosing real wrestling stars. Most of the wrestlers has different special moves. The commentator is pretty entertaining too. The gameplay is pretty solid and the game in general is well-made, and some moves has some quite aweseome cinematographic scenes.
I have good memories of it mostly, except for one thing. Its very tiring on the fingers. The matches generally consists of button-mashing in an endless brawl to get the upper hand of the damn opponent. Between the matches would ideally be places to rest your hands -- but nope -- there you have to mash more than ever to get the power-levels up in the training stages. So I wouldn't nominate Tecmo Cup Wrestling as the most relaxing game on the console. Its fun enough to play still though, so its not a huge problem.
Later Experiences:
When I played it again as an adult I beat it in a single afternoon, which surprised me. I didn't remember it as so easy, but its another story of musclememory I wonder. I felt I lucked out on the evil last guy though, as I got him pinned down on the first try. I know he's supposed to be a huge hassle, so I think I was extremely lucky. Still, the game isn’t extremely difficult, but as with most games one played a lot as a kid its difficult to tell from a more 'blind' point of view. Oh, and I really like the fake ending in the game. Thats very memorable.
Pro-tip: Choose one of those guys who can swing and throw the enemies out of the ring you can pretty much dominate the match in most cases. If you're clever you can also win matches by timing the opponent to be outside the ring for too long.
Difficulty level:
6-7 out of 10
Bubble Bobble (1986)
Where did I play it?
This guy I knew briefly had this old Nintendo classic game, and we played it a lot. Good game, and it probably has one of the most annoying yet catchy tunes in the whole NES library. Its short and its played through the whole thing — no break. Everyone who has played it knows what I'm talking about.
Did I beat it as a child?
Its difficult to say, because I remember playing it all day and since you have infinite continues in theory you can just push through. I don’t think we beat it though. The last boss doesn’t ring a bell like the rest of the game, and some of the later levels is pretty hard too (cue level 57 especially, pictured above!). Plus the ending is not the «real ending» anyway... so there’s that too.
The game is simply about two bubble dragons blowing bubbles. The bubbles captures enemies and you can jump on them. When all enemies are cleared the levels quicky switches and we’re on immediately the next level doing the same thing, and then the next level and over and over. Its simple, but still surprisingly addicting and fun. I didn’t know before I read the wiki, but the game is actually about two human brothers who has been transformed into bubble dragons to rescue their girlfriends from the evil Baron Von Blubba. Alright then.
Later experiences:
This was one of those games I bought late in the run because it was more expensive than the average game.
Me and a friend I hanged around with in when I attended filmschool had the game on his Nintendo Wii back in 2008, and I remember we beat it one fine evening, although we only got the bad ending. I had no idea back then what you had to do to get the good ending. I suspected you just had to play better than we did, get all the fruits, don't die as much perhaps, and it would make sense because we probably used a lot of continues. This actually wasn't the case though I would later find out.
In 2017 I actually had the same friend over at my place and we played it, and this time we did beat it with the «good ending». It has nothing to do with how you play really. Actually you have to find a secret entrance on one of the later levels, and then you get to play a bunch of other levels, and THEN you can beat it with the good ending. I think its the same end boss. My friend actually had this game for Sega when he was a kid and was a lot better at it than me, and in the process he called his brother to find out how you beat it with the good ending. It was kind of funny, but its really thanks to him that I got this game in the box legit for the run. I think you have to play it two-player to get to the good ending too.
As for the question if the game is hard or not it is sort of difficult to rate it because while it is vert long, you have endless continues so you can just keep on playing forever, and if you have unlimited tries and you start where you die it makes it easier than if you had to start over again from the beginning all the time. Kind of like how I feel with Ninja Gaiden too. Still, its 100 levels and that’ll keep you busy and on your toes. Plus, just the fact that you also have to play it two players and find the hidden entrance to get to the real ending.
I think I like the game, but I have more problems deciding if I hate or love the theme song. After playing it for hours it sure will make you tired.
Track & Field 2 (1988)
Where did I play it?
I remember two people who had this. Not close friends. I might have borrowed it for a little while, but not very long.
Did I beat it as a child?
Nah… not even close. I do remember however being impressed with the mashing-skills of one of the guys who owned it. Steel arms helps in this game, and a great real-life stamina as well. He was pretty good at it, although I’m not sure he could beat it. I suspect not. I remember thinking the game was cool, because it had so many different events and levels. The graphic and sound is pretty advanced for NES. Music is okay too. It even had a Taekwondo event, and that was the tits those days when Turtles and Karate Kid was all the rage.
Later experiences:
I bought it used somewhere. It was on the pile to play for a long time. I am not a sport game fan in general so I thought I wouldn't care too much for it, but I thought its a good game. I’m not a huge fan of having to mash buttons so much though, as its tiring if you don’t have a turbocontroller(which I would consider cheating to use), but there’s also lot of technique involved too luckily. The variety of the events makes up for it too. It was a game that I played for a while.
My favorite event was Archery. I found myself just playing it on practice for fun sometimes. Hammerthrow, pole vault and triple jump are also quite fun events too once you figure out how they’re done. Fence and taekwando are cool as well, but arguably a bit too easy. I don’t think I ever lost a single game in either of those events. Diving I never really mastered, its actually the only one I never figured out completely how even worked… but with four attempts I seemed to at least get one good dive by luck. Canoing is pretty fun. Clay shooting seems daunting at first, but is pretty easy when you get into it.
Swimming was one of the events I struggled with. You need to get under 50 seconds(45 the second round), and I would typically get either a couple seconds under or over, and it was difficult to predict. You simply have to mash like crazy. I got better eventually in my later rounds, but you have to sharpen your game on this one. You can also swim butterfly if you press A and down when you start, but while it supposedly is faster it also had disadvantages and I preferred swimming in default mode.
The most difficult event is by far the last event Horizontal Bar. Its very confusing because no matter how much you mash and what you do the results seems completely random. Sometimes you get a pretty high score, but most of the times you get a low score. Made no sense, and its very discouraging when you think you've done a great round and you get a low score. On the very last round of Horizontal Bar before completing the game you gotta get a straight 8.0 and it seems truly impossible.
I probably would have given up, as the guides online didn't help me too much, so I tuned in to TheMexicanRunner’s playthrough of it in his NESMania, and it indeed seemed like this was the event that made him pull his hair over the most as well. He seemed to find a way that worked eventually though. The trick seems to be that when you’re on the «Finish move», if you’re sharp you can squeeze in extra moves and you can potentially do this forever. This will add on to the final score. This can be tricky, because avoiding the finish isn't always easy and at this point I was typically very tired in my arms as well. If you manage to do this however you can get a 9.90 which is max score. I finally managed, and the game was beat. Phew.
The most bizarre event if the between the events when there’s a level you shoot gangsters. It seems VERY out of place in a sporting event game. There's also a hidden armwrestle game if you play 2 players practice, but it seems just like a button-masher competition.
Difficulty:
8.5 out of 10
Bart Simpsons VS The World (1991)
Where did I play it?
My uncles step-daughter had it. I remember playing it a little while visiting. Pretty fun. A lot of mini-games besides the normal Bart levels.
Did I beat it as a child:
I probably didn’t get far into it. I remember the skateboarding levels in China with the dragons very well. And I remember the mini-games. I might have barely reached the second world, the ice world, too.
Later experiences:
The game is about Bart winning a contest to go around the world, but its really Mr. Burns wgo secretly arranged the contest so he could get rid of the Simpsons family. You play as Bart who travel to different places in the world and end up fighting Mr.Burns relatives as bosses. As AVGN noted its not really much of travelling around the world since you only go to 4 places, that being China, North Pole, Egypt and Hollywood. They could have added a few more places, but oh well, at least the few places are spread worldwide.
The game plays a lot like a sequel to Bart Versus The Space Mutants, but has also thrown in a lot of mini-games you can play too on every world. Its a nice extra feature that sort of works. To be honest some parts of this game made me fairly pissed however. The worst parts of Bart Versus The Space Mutants was easily the levels with tricky jumping puzzle, because the jumping mechanics of the game is very awkward due to using the same button to run and to jump and some of the platforms you have to land on is sometimes easy to fall through unless you land on them perfect by frames. I was surprised to see that they hadn’t learnt from the first game game, because at some point I felt many of the levels in this game were only jumping puzzles of this sort! To make it worse I swear one round I fell through platforms no matter what I did, and lost all lives. It seemed glitchy. Overrall the difficulty level is still lowered since the game is kind of short. Bart Versus The Space Mutants felt longer when I played it.
One thing that probably also seem to have med some players frustrated is that if you eventually beat the game, you may find out you have to have collected ALL the special Krusty items to get the real ending. So you get a bad non-ending despite beating the game. You can’t miss a single one of them either. Personally I didn’t mind this, because it sort of gave the game replay value. Through out the game you see other Simpsons characters on the levels and they’ll give you the Krusty items. At first I thought they had just put the family members around as a random bonus feature, and I thought collecting these Krusty items only made up for points, so I actually liked that they meant something. In Wizards & Warriors 2: Ironman there's also certain hidden special items in the levels which I was trying to figure out what did, but they were just extra points. I found that more disappointing.
You can also become Bartman and fly, which was a cool feature you couldn't do in the first game.
The jumping puzzles though! Why make that such a central part of the game? Some of them will give me nightmares for years to come.
I liked the skateboard parts though. They should have made more of those. Still I quite like the game.
Difficulty:
7 out of 10
Chip & Dale (1990)
Where did I play it?
A friend had it. I remember we had a lot of fun playing this game at his house.
Did I beat it as a child?
Actually, yes. I quite vividly remember we got through it on 2 player and beat it and celebrated it jumping up and down as some kind of dorks. The game is simply a Disney platformer with Chip & Dale. An overview map with some levels. Rescue that chipmunk girl and beat the boss cat. Pretty simple fun. The most unique feature in the game is that its kind of designed to be a 2-player game. Not too many platformers works well in 2 players. You can pick up boxes and objects and throw them at enemies, and you can pick up the other player and throw them too. Some inventive leveldesigns and bossbattles, but mostly very straightforward. Quite nostalgic for me though.
Later experiences:
I got my sister to play it with me. We did some rounds over a few days and eventually beat it. A bit clumsy to begin with as she's not a gamer. We got through it with some luck a round before we probably should have beaten it. Just barely hanging on. I wouldn’t say the game is SUPER-easy but yes its probably is more on the easy side. Most experienced gamers won't find it very challenging. Its quite short for one, and save a couple of unique spots the levels are never very challenging. You just need to not mess up, which we did a lot for some reason. Quite fun, but I do prefer somewhat harder games personally.
Difficulty:
4/10
Ice Climber (1985)
Where did I play it?
Neighborgirl had it. Ice Climber was for us one of those «smaller» games that was fun for a little while, but one that also got monotonous and repetitive after not too long. It was an older game than most other NES titles.
Did I beat it as a child?
I don’t think most of us thought of Ice Climber as a game you could «beat» in a traditional sense, because:
1) It had that arcade feeling where it felt like the levels were looping, despite the levels variation.
2) When you noticed it actually had 32 levels, you had unlimited continues. You could also choose levels at any point. I remember skipping to the last level just to see, but the difficulty was too high.
Ice Climber is about two eskimos — Nana and Popi — trying to their getting their fruit back from a flying dinosaur who stole it and spread all the fruit over the top of 32 mountains for no good reason. Yes, thats quite random as far as plots go. What eskimos and fruit and dinosaurs has to do with eachother is anyone's guess, but fine. Enemies include birds, seals/yeti’s and icespikes falling down in your head. If you’re slow moving up the mountain a polarbear dressed in shorts and sunglasses comes along and bump the level up, killing you if you can’t keep up your progress up the mountain.
It was one of the Black Box games probably ported from arcade machines. 1985, same year as Super Mario Bros.
Later experiences:
I've personally matured to like Ice Climber after playing it a lot in this run, but I feel the game probably would have been a bigger retro-classic if they managed to make the jumping controls better. You can get used to them to a degree, but they are quite awful the first times you play it. You have to land on platforms quite perfectly to not fall off them. Many deaths in Ice Climber has been caused by missing a platform and landing on some enemy or into the void. Before getting good at it you'll see missing platforms will the the major factor of casualties in this game.
When I chose to beat Ice Climber I wasn’t sure what standard rule to make. There's 32 levels to beat and that part is fine, but when you game over you can technically just start on the level you died as you have unlimited continues. It just felt a bit cheap beating the game on unlimited tries, so I chose to make the own rule to beat it without any continues. Just a long straight playthrough with the 3 lives you're given. That to me was the only way I could claim to say I beat it.
Only problem is its actually very tough beating all 32 levels on 3 lives. There one hidden extra life in the first corn you pick up, but for a game like this its slim. Even when you start getting good at the levels there’s still a certain amount of random elements. Something just always happens once in a while, so even the best players I argue need some luck to get through it on one continue. After playing the game for at least a couple of weeks, 1-3 rounds every day, and after getting game over at level 30 and 31 a couple of times I finally managed to beat it on 5th October 2017. The only game in this run I have noted the date on when I beat it.
Since I played it on a multi-cart I also got to play the Japanese version that has seals and not the white hairy yets. Supposedly eskimos beating seals was deemed controversial and it was replaced in the american version.
Difficulty:
8-9 out of 10
(if you try to beat it on no continues, at least.. if you beat with unlimited continues its far less, like 3-4/10)
Carmen Sandiego In Time (1989)
Where did I play it?
My biggest nostalgia with Carmen Sandiego is playing the Macintosh version of Carmen Sandiego In Europe in the mid-90s. That I played a lot, and it was in black and white. Carmen Sandiego In Time isn’t as nostalgic as it was a NES game I emulated somewhere around 2008. I still remember playing it every day for a little period, so it got added onto the Nostalgia Run as I never beat it. So its slightly nostalgic.
Did I beat it as a child?
Carmen Sandiego In Europe for Mac I played a lot, but I never beat it (which is weird since I played it so much). Carmen Sandiego In Time I also remember doing my very best to beat, I was actually extremely set on beating it, but nope. In both instances of both games it felt like while you could play forever you just never got to Carmen Sandiego. Kind of mysterious. Other players experiences has been similiar it seems. I don’t know many that ever saw Carmen. Even after you caught all the others criminals many times she was always on the run.
Later experiences:
Right, so this is a game that is really difficult to get through, but the difficulty doesn’t come from the game itself being challenging, even if its not easy, it just comes from the insane length of it. I think already at 30-40 missions you are risking making the gamer dying of boredom or insanity by redundant repitition, and most people would have quite long before that, so you can imagine that you actually have to solve dizzingly 80 missions to beat it! I’ve read plenty of comments from people saying they just never caught Carmen. «She was always in another castle.» Hah, indeed, but this is the reason. Even if you have codes and can continue where you left off last time you played most people will move on a long time before finishing the game. If I didn’t know the number of missions and prepare for a VERY long grind my motivation would fall apart as well.
The slightly good news is that you don’t have to beat 80 missions to catch Carmen Sandiego at least. She will be on exactly mission 50, but you only have one chance so make it happen. So you can kind of calling it quits if thats your goal. Still, technincally after catching Carmen there’s another 30 superflous missions before the game tell you its time to retire as a time detective. It doesn't help that that every mission also becomes longer and longer.
So its a boring grind if you want to beat it. Still the monotone of Carmen Sandiego act became part of my daily routine for a long time. Its a bit weird, when you play a game for too long there’s a phase after that where it almost becomes an safe routine in your life. I didn’t have the Carmen dictionary thats originally included in the game, so I used search engines on mobile and it seemed just as fine. I also wrote down the answers. There’s like 50-60 historical references to memorize so the first rounds takes a while trying to figure out, but as you learn things more and more by memory it goes faster and faster and you can get a mission done in 8 to 14 minutes if you're effective. Either way, you won't see any speedruns of this game online anytime soon, so better polish your patience skill with this one!
As for the game itself its honestly quite fun if it wasn't so long. I still like the concept and gameplay. You're a time detective and you basically get leads by historical facts that you need to understand where took place, and then you can travel to that city in that period, and there you'll find new leads. You also sometimes gets hints on your suspect, like gender, haircolor, eyecolor or favorite artist or author. If you have enough facts about your suspect you can print out a warrant. When you've travelled enough cities your suspect will be in the city, and you can catch him/her. If you have the correct warrant your suspect is arrested and you've successfully completed a mission.
Its pretty fun for a while, you learn a lot of history, but its almost like they didn't intend you to finish the game. When you've done all the missions you basically just get a short congratulation-text that you have retired as a detective and you're thrown back into the lobby confused thinking "Was that it?". After playing the game for so long I would assume most people would have expected something special, but its barely anything. There's nothing unique to see when you catch Carmen Sandiego either. Same animation as with every other female suspect caught. The game is kind of disappointing in this regard, but still it felt like a triump to get through a Carmen Sandiego game, as I don't think many has.
Below, picture of my TV when I caught Carmen.
Difficulty:
9 out of 10
Kung Fu (1984)
Where did I play it?
Kung Fu is one of these faint memories of a game I have no clue where I played it or where I saw, but I remember seeing it and playing it at least once. The game for its simplicity has quite a strong expression.
Did I beat it as a child:
No. I only remember it looking cool.
What is the game about? You’re a kung-fu guy names Thomas, and your girlfriend Sylvia has been kidnapped by Mr. X and his men. So you have to kick and punch your way through a building that has five 5 levels, each with its own unique boss at the end. You also fight moths, snakes and small dragons. On the fifth level it ends in a bossfight with Mr.X, and if you beat him you rescue Sylvia. The levels are pretty short, and involves a lot of enemies ganging up on you. Some boss fights are also harder than others.
Later experiences:
I got a Kung Fu cart as a birthday-present recently. I got through by playing it casually through a couple of days. Its a small game and can be finished within 10 minutes if you're experienced. For me the game went quite smooth for a while until I got stuck on the Wizard guy on 4th level. He really stumped me. For some reason it didn’t appear to me that you could hit his lower body, so I kept trying to kick his head off over and over and over hoping it eventually would pay off. I also started going insane wondering if there was a game mechanic I hadn’t discovered. He sometimes makes a copy of himself, and I wondered if the 'copy' was the real him, like something like Shredder in Turtles 2, but no. I would always die. I eventually took him down by pure accident. Wow. The giant on level 3 can be unpredictable too. Sometimes he just gets you no matter what. The rest of the game didn’t give me any issues. Mr X wasn’t too difficult, and Silvia was soon rescued. Happy ending. Not the most the original plot, but to be fair these types of games wasn't done to death in 1984.
I wasn't sure when I would say the game was beaten though. To challenge myself a little I thought I’d go for Gamemode B too. Gamemode B basically means its harder. You take more damage. The game also gets harder and harder by loops, so its sort of a personal question when you consider to have mastered the game. I felt just beating the game in Mode A on 2 loops, and B was enough.
Its a neat little game. Go play it.
Difficulty:
4-5/10
Mega Man 4 (1991)
Where did I play it?
Well, Mega Man 4, 5 and 6 aren’t really childhood games, but games I played around 2007/2008 on emulators. Barely nostalgic, kind of.
Did I beat it then?
Yes, although by some use of save states, which arguably makes the runs not count…
Later experiences:
I beat Mega Man 4, and 6 in some days earlier in the run actually, but I noticed I had not written any notes on them, and all three games was just a compound messy blur since I played them so closely together. When I realized I couldn’t even seperate these games in my mind, I decided to play through them again simply to have something more unique to say about them.
The thing with the three later games in the Mega Man series for NES is that they suffer from the same critique. Whatever they are in their own right they are sometimes seen as phoned in cash-ins from the three first games who are considered classics, and offer little new. Basically «more of the same«. There’s some merit to that for sure, since all the six games plays very similarly, the blue bomber himself never changed his look, but does that make the games themselves bad?
I don’t know. Its interesting to think about the ethics and morals in re-making almost the same game over and over.
What if we had 6 Punch Outs for NES? Almost the same game but with different boxers and tournaments?
What if we had 6 sequels to the Zelda 1. Same game with new levels, perhaps new enemies and bossed?
What if we had 6 Super Mario Bros 1. Well, we actually did have a direct sequel for Famicom, so it would kind of be like that x 6…
Sure its cash ins based on a successful games, but if the games otherwise are good and people want more on the same formula it becomes a matter of opinion if its wrong. I’d love to have seen more Punch Out games on NES, although perhaps not six. That would be over-milking the cow. To build the same game around the same game engine is not too artistic however. There’s like a hidden rule that artists should ideally evolve, not go the safe route, they should embark on new territory, be risky! If they can re-make themselves into something completely different but still be just as good, that's the hidden ideal. Something like Stanley Kubrick is for movies. When they do a masterpiece its important to not mess with it anymore, at least so goes the rule. Walk away from it. Mega Man 4 should have been something completely different then? Instead it looks like a second part of Mega Man 3, just more of the same.
Still while re-playing Mega Man 4 its a good game. Looking around the retro-community some actually thinks Mega Man 4 is one of the best games. Its weird, because there's always someone who actually argues 4, 5 or 6 are the best games. They claim 2 and 3 are seen too much with nostalghia and that the games really has become better and better. Mega Man 4 indeed has new innovations. Its the first game that uses the controversial booster. Some people like it, some people don’t. Its also the first game that introduces a new evil boss. Its not Dr. Wily this time, but Dr. Cossack! The twist of course is that its Dr Wily behind it after all. There’s also a couple of hidden tools here if you look carefully around the levels, like the hook.
My judgement? I’d like to say I like the game. Its definitely challenging enough, despite the booster to beat the robot masters you really need to figure out what weapons works the best. Its the hardest of the second trilogy in my opinion. The game feels longer than the others too, although I'm not sure if thats just me. The last boss fight with Dr. Wily was very cool, and some of the music was great. My favorite tune was Skull Man, and my favorite robot master here is Dust Man.
None of the Mega Man games are notoriously hard, still I have to admit I used quite a few continues in my run here.
If the games had limited continues I suspect people would remember these games as harder. Endless continues + a fun game evens out hard challenges quite a bit.
Difficulty
6 out of 10
Mega Man 5 (1992)
Where did I play it?
Same deal as with Mega Man 4. I played it in 2008 with emulators and save states.
Did I beat it as a child?
I beat it with save states in 2008, and I beat it for the run once already, but since I played 4, 5 and 6 over a few days my memory of all these games transformed together like a mess. They are very similiar. So I played them all again to notice the differences and to have something to write about.
Mega Man 5 once again has 8 robot masters you have to tackle first, and then its off to the castle. The twist with the story is that the main villain is actually Proto Man, the mysterious guy you never truly know is a good guy or bad guy in the earlier games. As he sometimes fight you, and sometimes help you. The games did a good job on keeping him mysterious. This time he seems like a bad guy after all, so you have to go to his castle. Wow. Spoiler though, in the end its all Dr Wily again. He made a fake clone of Proto Man, and as in Mega Man 4 another castle with Dr. Wily is presented. It gives you more levels for your bucks.
Later experiences:
After my replay this game felt a lot easier than Mega Man 4. Many of the bosses in Mega Man 4 are actually quite tricky and even sorely depends a bit on finding the weapon that they are weak on. In Mega Man 5 however I managed to beat many of the bosses on first try just by using the normal booster. The levels felt easier too, and the game is also more generous with extra lives and e-tanks than other Mega Man games. Suddenly you have 8 lifes and 5 e-tanks, and you feel spoiled. So at least until the Proto Man boss I felt the game was considerably easier. The fake Proto Man was a bit of a challenge though. I died and died until I found a way to tackle him, but the real shock was that I messed up wasting all my e-tanks because I started playing sloppy and didn’t spare them, so that resulted in bad karma and I got stuck on Dr Wily’s last stage without any e-tanks. He kicked my ass over and over and over, until I got quite depressed. Eventually I would find a strategy that worked though, but man, ever had one of those moments when your gaming spirit is broken?
I also missed getting to use BEAT the bird in my playthrough. Which sucked. BEAT was one of the innovations I saw from the previous games and you can only get him if you collect all the letters at the robot masters levels. One of the letters is well hidden in Stone Man's stage, so its easy to miss him. Seems like they on these later games wanted to add replay value, which is commendable. So I played the game again just to check out BEAT, and he was pretty cool. Beat is very helpful and strikes down your enemies, but he's not overtly OP either. Its easy to use him up. Beat is great on the last level with Dr. Wily. Another innovation was the water scooter part, which was a nice touch.
There's also the revelation that Proto Man is really Mega Man's brother. Which is a pretty awesome cinematic ending. They must have planned this reveal for many games, which is weird. Mega Man 5 is a pretty good game despite the game-series is a stereotype of itself by now. It also has some of the best games in the series. I like Mega Man 5, but I have more issues with the sixth installment. Which will be more difficult to review.
Difficulty:
5 out of 10
Mega Man 6
Where did I play it?
Only emulated in 2008, like with Mega Man 5 and Mega Man 6.
Did I beat it back then?
Yes, but with some use of save states.
The story this time is that a Dr. X with sunglasses has its own robot masters, and bla bla. Its really Dr. Wily again. Not a very inspired story. This one didn't even seem like they made an effort. It seems the game was thrown out to sell with the Nintendo Top Loader at the end of Nintendo’s life span. The first Mega Man game for SNES had already been released when Mega Man 6 hit the scene.
Later experiences:
This game has to been the most difficult to review for me so far. I really didn’t care much for this game initially, it felt like a cheap uninspired cash-in and I was ready to give it a negative review. However when I look at retro-reviews and so on I notice a lot of people really like this game, and has concluded the opposite as me. They defend it as one of the greater games in the series. Which is interesting, and I have to doubt my own perception. So keep that in mind. Some people do really love this game.
Well, when I played Mega Man 6 I was quite bored with playing Mega Man games, because while I enjoyed both number 4 and 5 as unique experiences and felt they were defensable, I felt number 6 was pretty bland in most ways compared to them. The music mostly wasn’t as inspired, the bosses weren’t as memorable (Plant man? Slaloom man? Knight Man?), the levels and everything just felt like «more of the same». Every stage was also incredibly easy, which was its main problem for me. I like a good plot in games more than I suspect many games, but I also enjoy a good challenge. This game had neither. Boss fights were typically just finding their pattern, finding the weapon you’re supposed to use and take them down. The mega booster was often enough and their patterns seemed a lot simpler than previous games. Even Dr. Wily was extremely easy. I had probably 5-6 e-tanks to spare after beating him, plus 8-9 lives. The ending was also quite silly with Dr. Wily behind bars. So I don’t know. I’m not a huge fan of the game.
Now, to be fair to Mega Man 6 I think playing it back-to-back after number 4 and 5 may had made me tired of playing Mega Man, and I don’t know if my impression would have been different if I played it later. I can imagine for example a younger kid than me playing Mega Man 6 first. He might love it, and go back to Mega Man 2 or 3 and find them inferior. Thats actually not impossible. All the games are very similiar after all, and some humble innovations are actually present in Mega Man 6. The graphics is probably improved, there's some detailed enemies and backgrounds, and there’s also the element of different paths which I don’t think happened in earlier games... giving it replay value. Rush also transforms into the blue bomber and with a jet and a powerpunch, which could be argued is better. I didn't mind these aspects.
Still, I honestly feel ending it with Mega Man 5 would have been better. Mega Man 5 had the Proto Man plot and the reveal at the end.
However, if you like Mega Man and you have played the others and want more it’ll do its job. I’d pick it last though.
After my Mega Man run I think I’d rank them:
2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. (I didn’t plan it to go in chronological order, and 4 and 5 are almost interchable.)
I don’t know where I’d put Mega Man 1. Its a game I didn’t play in my childhood or later, and when I finally had a physical copy it glitched out in one of the Dr. Wily stages. I quite liked it until then though. Its a bit harder than some of the Mega Man games, and you notice its still taking shape.
Difficulty:
4 out of 10
Mario Bros. (1983)
Where did I play it?
A buddy had it. We used to call it Super Mario Zero… because it was a Mario game before the first game, which was number 1. So this had to be Super Mario Zero, right? You can play it in Super Mario Bros 3... kind of. So I remember slapping him in the back of the head because he bought this game after already having Super Mario Bros 3. Why not buy a game he didn't have?
Did I beat it as a child:
No, it seemed mysteriously endless. I remember we always wondered if you got far enough into it you would meet Koopa, or fight bosses, or something. It seemed like it would go forever and ever. Like most arcade games. I have no clue how far we got.
Its an interesting game in one way. Despite its simplicity its the only game that really makes sense of the fact that Mario and Luigi are plumbers. Sure, travelling in pipes are common in most Mario games, but this is the only game where you are actually in the sewers cleaning pipes from enemies. It makes perfect sense they are plumbers in this game! It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense besides that. So you’re fighting huge crabs, turtles and huge flies coming out of pipes? There’s also the ice-spikes and the red and green flame balls that appears. Its as simple as a game gets, but at least there's no damsel in distress to rescue, as too many games at the time was about.
Later experiences:
I was actually very curious what the story with this game was, so I looked forward to playing it. I didn’t think Ice Climber was a game with a technical ending, so I though perhaps Mario Bros one had one too? When does it actually stop? Does it ever? Now we can find out.
The answer is it it really just goes on forever into infinity. According to AdamL’s game ending guide the game doesn’t throw you anything new after level 12, and from there its the same background and repeats itself with slight random changes in enemies(and there's very few different ones). It becomes harder after that, at least I think so, but since the game doesn’t change and goes on forever you can say level 12 is the end.
You don’t need many tries «beating the game» if you only need to get to level 12 though. If you play a bit strategic its actually quite easy. There’s a gamemode A and a gamemode B. Gamemode B enemies recover faster and the flameballs are more frequent. Gamemode B is perhaps harder, but its still something most semi-experienced players will have no problem doing in a few tries.
Perhaps one should be harder on this game, as it could have been so much more. However:
1. Its really old. Its the oldest game as it was originally from 1983, and although the NES port is from 1986 its exactly the same game. So it predates almost all other NES games.
2. An arcade game. They’re often a repeating experience that goes on forever.
Its not a bad game if you see it in that context. It has its charm.
Difficulty:
3/10 (to get to level 12)
Duck Hunt (1984)
Where did I play it?
I wonder if Duck Hunt was actually the very first Nintendo game I ever played. I saw it at someone’s house, and it was pretty amazing. Shooting a gun at the TV, and it interacted with the ducks inside the game. Quite cool. The game has three modes. Shoot 1 duck per round, shoot 2 ducks per round and then there’s the clay shooting, which almost looks like a different game. Its also quite infamous for the dog that laughs at you when you fail to hit the bird.
Did I beat it as a child:
Noooo... Duck Hunt certainly isn’t a game most people consider a game you can actually beat. At least until you're on some kind of completion project like this. There’s «levels» in Duck Hunt in the sense of rounds so the games goes faster and faster and faster. You also have to improve your accuracy as well every level, meaning there’s less room for missing a shot. I didn’t have the game so I don’t know how many rounds I played, I suspect not too many, but I think as children we were kind of stupid too, because when we realized you could just point the gun into the TV-screen and that worked just as well as standing a reasonable length a way from it - we simply did that and thought we were clever. The problem with that is of course that the game gets unchallenging its boring.
Later experiences:
I put this game on hold for a long time because I was worried the zapper I bought wouldn’t work, that my CRT TV somehow wouldn’t take it, or something wouldn’t work. I heard many examples of people not getting their gun to function, so I was worried. Luckily, my worked just fine.
To «beat the game» there’s two ways you can go about it. The first one is actually beating all 99 levels, because then it loops back to level 1 again. Some reports says the game crashes. The other way is to do it like TheMexicanRunner did, and that is to go to level 20. On level 20 the speed maxes out and its also the first round you can’t miss a single time. After level 20 the game supposedly repeats over and over again, although I’m not 100% sure about. Its possible it goes even faster after that, its a bit difficult to know for sure.
I did the same as TheMexicanRunner. Like he did I also considered that I had to beat 20 rounds in each of the 3 modes to consider the whole game beaten. It was very tense, and my hands sweated and trembled a little in the end, but I just needed a couple of attempts on the two duck modes(I failed the first time by one single duck on round 20), and one single attempt on the clay shooting-mode, even though its arguably the most difficult mode. So I didn't have too much trouble, but I still think it was a challenge. Just finding the best method to use the zapper and I think anyone can master this game without too much trouble.
If you’re going to attempt beating 99 levels I wish you good luck though. Thats a clear 10/10 difficulty challenge. I could probably push it to 30 rounds if I insisted, but the problem is there’s no room to mess up after level 20, and for whatever reason you always mess up at least once in a while. At least I do.
I like Duck Hunt, and it has a great nostalgic factor for me, as I’m sure it has for most people who played. Still, I think its a shame they didn’t do more with this game because it has so much potential. They could have different types of ducks, they could have had bosses, different changing backgrounds, etc, but nope... just the same duck over and over into infinity. Its a game that gets old quick after the novelty of using the gun. It was a cool experience using the zapper again though.
I think its kind of comical there’s been made several flash games and similiar where its possible to shoot the dog. Everyone hated his giggling when you lost.. and many players tried to shoot it.
Difficulty:
5/10
Where did I play it?
Neighbour-girl had it. Didn’t really play it withon theyears when it was released, but a few years after so it looked kind of like a pretty old game already then. Didn’t interest me too much. Today its a game that fascinates me.
Did I beat it as a child:
I only remember just playing a few stages in and not for long. It was pretty difficult with the skateboard and all -- seriously thats a strange powerup, especially in some of the jumping puzzle levels… It looks charming and colorful and cute however, so it never dawned on anyone I knew exactly how difficult game the really is, especially if you aim to beat it.
In Adventure Island you are Master Higgins, a chubby caveman boy stuck in a tropical island with caves and palmtrees everywhere. He has to rescue his girlfriend Tina, and lots of random enemies like huge snails, crows, spiders that look like vegetable, jumping squids, frogs and huge weirdlooking marlins. Among other things. At the end of each world a huge boss awaits, and he’ll change head and fly to the next world if you beat him.
Later experiences:
When I got back into «retrogaming» some of it had to do with playing really hard Nintendo games, and for a while I was really curious what truly was «the most notoriously difficult NES game». Perhaps its comparable to when mountainclimbers want to understand whats the hardest mountain to climb. I remember finecombing through all hardest NES lists on youtube, blogs, forums and so on. The lists usually consisted on average of a Top 3 of Battletoads, Ghost N Goblins and Silver Surfer. Sometimes Ninja Gaiden. Usually disagreements on other games. After hanging around NintendoAge, I realized those are not really the most difficult NES games. Perhaps hardest by the standards of the well known games a lot of people played when they were young, but there’s some tougher ones in the more unknown depth catalog of NES games to be found. (Bump & Jump comes to mind for example.)
Most people actually know about Adventure Island though. Its not a rare game. Its sometimes deemed as a bit of a rip-off of Super Mario Bros, but perhaps had quite enough charm to stand on its own feet anyway. Surprisingly not a lot of people expected such a cute and pretty well known game like Adventure Island would be up there with those «Nintendo Hard» titles like Battletoads, but it seems to be the case after closer examination. Adventure Island seems pretty easy at the beginning, that is part of the reason. Sure, it can be stressful for some new players because our protagonist is in constant need of food to keep his energy up, but besides that its not too bad. You’ll fly through the first worlds with not too much practice. There’s in total 8 worlds with 4 levels in each, with 4 checkpoints on each level. Its also kind of repetitive as many levels repeats just with increased difficulty. That usually means more enemies, harder jumps and more trickery in general.
A seasoned player won’t see more than a slightly above average challenging platformer for a while though. Its all a trap because the game eventually plans to rape you. Around world 7 things the levels start to get gradually more and more crazy. Its difficulty starts shooting through the roof and your confidence will be murdered. The mysterious thing with Adventure Island however is that its tricky to say if its so hard by design or if its just sloppy unattending programming going on. One could easily imagine that the later levels simply weren’t test-played as much as they should be have been. Perhaps it was rushed by deadlines, who knows. Or perhaps its like what the theory with Battletoads is, that the difficulty was tweaked so much so people wouldn’t finish it as a rental. It shall remain a mystery.
The two levels that makes this game so legendary hard however is level 8-2 and 8-3. There’s a trillion enemies just swarming the screen at all times in 8-2, and your jumps has to be quite picture frame-perfect for not to die. Normally you also have easy access to your throwing hammer in Adventure Island, and that really helps when there’s many enemies on screen, but on this level you’ll lose your weapon and you’ll have to play the one of the most difficult level in NES history pacifist. That may throw you off guard. There's a lot to remember in this level and you need to memorize it. 8-3 is tough too but manageble -- until the last part. Its a jumping puzzle so difficult its almost like I suspect the programmers to have left it almost unbeatable that by mistake. I’m skeptical a lot of people back in the 80s made it through this. Perhaps by luck after endless tries. It is possible to make it, but it demands shooting of a third bat coming at you with a lucky shot and then make it to the platform. Its almost impossible, but when you know how its done it can be replicated after a couple of tries with luck. These two levels alone will keep you sweating. Last level 8-4 is pretty annoying too, but you’re sort of in the final stretch there.
What evens the game out a bit is that the bosses are usually pushovers. Just shoot the boss in the head sometimes and be careful about its sparse fireballs. Even the last boss of the game is pretty easy. He’s exactly like the other bosses, but only takes a few more hits. Another thing that makes it easier is the infamoys Hudson Bee, which is a secret item at the end of level 1. It gives you unlimited continues if you hold select and either way on the D-pad when you game over. I can’t imagine many people getting through the game first time without the Hudson Bee.
As for the game its a pretty awesome game if you want a good "NES hard" challenge. Its a simple game in itself otherwise, seeing its an older title, but I found it very fun and rewarding to play, and perhaps even more so to finish.
Difficulty:
10/10
Willow (1989)
Where did I play it?
Willow was a game I played on emulator while in film school around 2008. I remember reading about it in Nintendo magazines as a child however and remember it looking cool and always wanted to play it. Probably the reason I played it in 2008.
Did I beat it?
No, but I did a valiant effort to get quite far. I think it just took too long, and I decided to cut it off. Back then I was dead scared of getting addicted to games and spend too much time on them. While my recent playthrough I tried to pin down how far I got the last time, but wasn’t sure. I probably got to the cave where Fin Raziel is at and right before moving onto the mountains.
Later experiences:
Willow is a game based on the movie license of the George Lucas movie. Its been a while since I’ve seen the movie, but supposedly the story is so different in the game from the movie people suspect the Capcom developers hadn’t actually seen the movie, but still wanted to make a story-driven game, so they used the characters and built a new story. Weird! They even added characters thats not in the movie, like these strange eagle people.
The game plays a lot like The Legend Of Zelda, but more storydriven. Well, that and it has RPG elements as you level up your health, mana and strength. Willow is the «chosen» one to save the world from the evil witch Bavmorda, and you also need to restore the good sorceress Fin Raziel who has been transformed to an animal back to herself. There’s also all kinds of sidequests on the way there of course. You start out in the house of Willow, where his mother and siblings wish him good luck on his adventures. You can always go back to restore your health and mana, although you probably won’t because as you progress into new cities there other more convenient places to fill up your energy. You get new and stronger swords, shields and magic spells along the way. There’s also a lot of items in the game that need to found to progress the story.
Its a pretty fun game. I like Willow. As a seasoned adventuregame player I also enjoyed that there were actually puzzles here too. You had to figure out what to do, and where to go, and there was some thinking involved, but I never found it too frustrating. The story and puzzle part was good. The fighting system is not too bad either, and lots of quirky enemies.
The game is not extremely difficult, at least not compared to what I expect some of those longer RPGs are, but Willow did tug on my patience a bit. It just seemed a LOT longer than it needed to be! I think I already must have been only around 60% into the game when I first started to prepare for the ending, because it just felt like that there couldn’t be much left. It was, in reality I had barely gotten halfway in. The real challenge (and the curse) with Willow is the dungeons and forests. They’re huge and there’s no map screen like in Legend Of Zelda to see where you are or where you’ve been, so you sort of HAVE TO map out everything with pen and paper. If you want to be sure you don’t miss some important items or weapons you’re forced to. I got a little bit tired with that. Plus, after finding what I expected to be the final destination, a huge castle where the evil witch supposedly was in, I would find out there was yet another huge castle after that again. I suppose Willow is a good example of a game that today would have made a lot shorter to balance it out. Back in those days games really weren’t really made to be beaten in 2-3 days it seems. Some games were supposed to last for a long time, children were supposed to struggle for months or even years, and sometimes you’d expect the programmers to not really want or care if most people to ever see the ending.
I guess a cool part of the plot was that at least Willow didn’t save a princess. Too many of the games back in the NES catalog was about a guy saving a girl. Willow found a different way of a hero-story, nothing super-original, but still felt quite different. I also liked that the last boss, evil witch Bavmorda was no pushover. Pretty good game!
Difficulty:
7-8/10
Where did I play it?
Emulated briefly in the early 2000s. Not sure if I ever saw it before that. Maybe pictures in Nintendo magazines.
Did I beat it then?
Well, the thing with Ice Hockey is that there is no tournament, league or cup option.. nothing like that. There’s only the option of a single game against another team. Thats it! (Besides 2-player game where you can play against another player.) Its odd because I can’t imagine it being very difficult to set up something like that when you have the gameplay and teams and everything else already made. I best remember playing this on emulator with a buddy. I remember getting quite pissed because he beat me all the time. I just couldn’t figure the game out at all and what the trick was to it, and my players would always get disqualified, never his. I just wasn’t good at it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I never beat a single game against the computer.
Later experiences:
I was happy to find a compilation cart that had it, and some of the final games I needed to complete this nostalgia run.
Ice Hockey isn’t a complicated game. Its pretty fun to play. Its basically ice hockey. While the 2-3 out of 10 difficulty may make it seem like its an easy game, I’d say its actually not quite. The dfficulty just because you have to beat only one game to beat it, and one game takes only 7 minutes. You won’t find it difficult to get through when thats all it takes.
Surprisingly, I still found it hard to master. It seems simple, but there’s some trick to it. Some games I would score a lot and win. Other times the other team would just trash me… and the rhyme or reason was beyond me. I made it my goal to master the gameplay. As for strategies I noticed just shooting was never a safe option to score. It seemed like passing the puck to someone on the other side of the goal and then quickly shoot was the most effective way to score a goal. You can choose between thin players, fat players or the normal sized players. The fat players shoot the hardest, but are slow. The thin guys shoots very weak, but are fast, which is handy when on the attack. The normal players are average in both. I didn’t experiment much with these options and just played with the default set-up. You can choose between 6 countries or so, but I don’t think there’s any difference.
To challenge myself I figured I would make my own little tournament basically having to beat all the teams in a row without losing. While struggling a bit in one of last battles I got through it on the first try. In my final game I won by a 13-2. By far my best game I ever did, so I’m satisfied saying the game was beaten by this point.
Its pretty fun. Very much a pick up and play-kind of title. It was released much later than it looks. This was released the same year as Super Mario Bros 3 and Ninja Gaiden, but it looks like it could be a release title. I’ve played Blades Of Steel, released a year before, and its more complex and better in most ways. Still Ice Hockey has its charm.
Difficulty:
2-3/10
Where did I play it?
Never played it on the NES as a kid, but I played it on an emulator in the late 90s. When emulators was new on the scene.
Did I beat it in the 90s?
Well, its possible. Emulators have savestates, and this is a game very easy to exploit with savestates, but I’m not sure. My guess is no.
What is Casino Kid? Well, you’re a young man in a casino. You can walk around and challenge people and play poker and blackjack for money. There's some progress in the sense you have to beat certain players to able to play others, and in theory at least the opponents gets tougher and tougher (although I was never 100% sure if that is the case). If you go broke you’re game over, but if you win you bankrupt the other player and can challenge new players. If you beat all the challengers in the casino and you get to play against the mysterious player «KING». The king of the casino basically.
Later experiences:
Casino Kid is a pretty fun game. Its basically just blackjack and poker - no roulette or slotmachines despite you actually see them in the casino - and you have to play your way to the top. Easy to understand as long as you know how to play blackjack and poker. The gameplay otherwise is kind of like Pokemon or an RPG like that, as you seeing everything top down and talk with people.
I found it a little annoying that the game don’t really tell you who you have to play against next. So you sort of have to try to talk to everyone until someone wants to play you. It an be tedious. Sometimes you’ll be guided to play someone, and they "You should challenge Martha", but it doesn’t help too much since you can’t see who the people’s name are before you actually play them. This is pretty bad programming. It would be a very nice feature to be able to see what people’s name was when you talked to them so you could make yourself a bit familiar who they are and go back to them later.
The game is initially pretty hard, and playing until one player loses all money can take forever and day, but when you learn the trick with Casino Kid it becomes a lot easier. Basically you have to note the passwords after you’ve won a match, and then rely on winning the «bet all your money» challenges. This put the game into a quick 50/50 lose or win immediately. If you lose one of them you simply just have to reset and use your last password and try again, but its at least a 50% chance you’ll eventually win so it won’t take you too much time to beat every opponent. The pokerplayers will challenge you with the «bet all you got», but the blackjack players you have to challenge yourself. You do this by clicking select. You usually have to play a little bit before they accept the "bet all you got"-challenge, and I think thats good or else you could beat the game in a few minutes.
When you’ve beaten a string of challengers in poker and blackjack you’ll meet the final boss «KING». He’s a disguised mysterious person. I feared he would be some kind of superplayer, the Mike Tyson of Casino Kid, but in my experience he wasn’t any harder than the other players, and I could swear some of the later players were more difficult than him. Players are only different in that some of the earlier players expresses when they get bad cards or good cards, while the later one's can fake it. Some players around the casino can sometimes give you good tips how to read certain players face.
King played pretty bad all the way. Perhaps I was incredibly lucky, but I beat him with a pair of 3’s in the end!
Difficulty:
5/10
Where did I play it?
North & South really a game I have a lot more nostalgia for me as an Amiga 500 game, but since my OCD wanted to finish every single game I EVER played as a child I threw it in here on the list.
I barely remember the same guy I borrowed Ironsword: W&W2 had this game as well. We played it a little I remember. Not much, but enough for me to remember it.
Did I beat it as a child:
On Amiga I’m sure my older cousin may have beaten it. He was the one who owned the Amiga. I was too young to even fathom how to play it at the time.
On Nintendo I doubt it. Perhaps the guy who had it did. I don't think I borrowed it.
North & South is a pretty unique game. Its on one hand like a strategy game or board game where you place around tokens(soldiers) on a map of the US, but the battles you play when its action is almost like an action game. When you attack another soldier you move on to a battlescene where you have an army with a canon, horses and soldiers. You need to kill the army of the enemy to take over the state. When you try to overtake a base with a trainstation there’s an awkward platform game where you have to race to a flag on a time limit. Its pretty fun when you get into it, but quite awkward at first. There’s a similar game when you can overtake the enemies trains to steal the enemies money. With money you collect enough to your safe to get new soldiers at the end of a round. The one who kills all of the opponent’s soldiers win the game. It can be a quick round or a long one depending on various factors. This is probably a pretty fun 2 player game. The funny graphics is very unique and is based on a comic from Belgium. It gives the game a very unique touch.
Later experiences:
North & South is a quite interesting game. When I was younger I always thought of it as this very complex and advanced game for very adult players, because it just had many different and unique things going on. When I got back to it as an adult I beat it in 10 minutes. I was actually surprised how easy and simple the game was to beat. Even on the hardest setting its not a hard game. A part of me first thought «Huh, thats beaten then», but I felt I needed to spend more time with it, to understand and appreciate it fully, so I did. I wanted to learn more about its hidden quirks because there are quite a few. So I’ve played it on and off for a while. I've come to like the game for what it is.
I played it long enough to see the Mexican and the indian take action. Its quite rare they do anything, but I remember it from my childhood they could become aggressive. Eventually I experienced it. I don’t know what triggers it, but it seems to quite random and very rare. What happens is they both basically kill one of your soldiers. The Mexican kills the soldier on the Mexican border, and the Indian throws a tomahawk and kills a random soldier somewhere on the board. There's also an option to turn on ships, which basically means the player who has captured North Carolina every fourth round (or so) gets a ship that delivers a new soldier. There's also a bad weather mode you can turn on. It makes a dark sky sometimes land over players so you can't move them for a round. You can also choose between four years of the civil war, from 1861 to 1864. I used to wonder what relevance the year you choose has, but it basically only means how far into the war you've gotten. Further into the war the more soldiers is on the map.
North And South is a pretty cool game for trying to be something completely different. Its also quite hysterical that you can actually play as the south. If you win the ending screen says its obvious you didn’t take history classes in school.
Difficulty:
3-4/10
