Where did I play it?
There was this friend of a friend that owned it. Lived in a street next to mine. I never played the two first Lolo games, only the third one, although remember seeing it in Nintendo magazines. It looked different -- and it was different from most Nintendo games. 

Did I beat it as a child: 
Not close. I only remember barely playing it. Its POSSIBLE I borrowed it a some days, but that couldn’t have been long. If at all. I probably beat the few first rooms or something, or saw the guy who owned it show off beating a few levels. I didn’t play it much. It was however very memorable. I never forgot it. It looked so good for its time and it was very unique. I also remember it being hyped in the Nintendo Magazines a lot. Lolo was almost like semi-mascot for Nintendo, just on the row behind Mario and Zelda. The game seemed a bit 'adult' in the sense that it was a bit quite complex for children, still I presume I would have had fun had I owned this game as a child. Actually, if there’s one game I would bring back in time to give myself as a kid its possibly this though, because this is mindexpanding stuff. Beating some of the harder levels in a Lolo game is like is quite the braingymnastic session! 

Later experiences: 
Since this was the VERY last game in my Nostalgia Run for NES, and I wanted to go the extra mile, so I thought I’d beat Lolo 1 and Lolo 2 before going on to Lolo 3, despite I never played the two first before. The rumour on the street was that Lolo 3 was extremely hard, and also a big game, so I saved it for last. I can confirm the games are hard, at least when you get past the initial levels. This is not a game you’re supposed to beat in a single afternoon. If you beat a room or two every day that can be quite enough as a playing session. At least it was for me.  
 

After beating Lolo 1 I went on to the next one: The Adventure Of Lolo 2. This game is in many ways the exact same game as Lolo 1, but a variations of levels. Everything else is the same. It didn’t bother me though, because Lolo 1 was so much fun I didn’t mind more of the same. Storywise its the same too. Lala has been kidnapped be King Egger, and you have to rescue her by running through the rooms collecting pearls. Some very small updated sprites on some of the enemies from Lolo 1, but I didn’t notice any difference at all beyond that. Well, there is one difference. Lolo 2 is harder. The end levels of Lolo 1 made me sweat a little bit, but the same level of difficulty starts in Lolo 2 just half way in and gets more and more difficult from there on. The bossbattle with King Egger was also different. In Lolo 1 we only saw a cutscene which was more of a joke, while in Lolo 2 there actually is a bossbattle.

Once again the level design is very impressive. Perhaps even more impressive than in Lolo 1.
I’m proud to say I didn’t use walkthrough on any levels on Lolo 1, but on Lolo 2 I had to use it twice. 
 

There’s also tutorial levels where an old-grandfather-Lolo teaches you some game mehcanic. Not needed at all if you played the previous games, but quite neat either way. There’s last but not least frequently boss fights now. Last level on Lolo 2 included a bossfight with the King Egger, but in Lolo 3 you’ll see a variation of boss fights on most levels. Its typically just larger versions of the smaller enemies, like the snakes, the medusas and so on. The boss fights are perhaps not very challenging, they're often very easy to beat, but they serve as a welcoming breather in a game thats more about strategy than reflexes. They're quite easy, but still fun. 

The most interesting part storywise is you don’t have the goal to rescue Lala this time, and you can choose to play as her as a playable character as both Lolo and Lala tags along the world. Unfortunately, she plays exactly the same way as Lolo, but its still a nice feature and another thing that sets it apart from the two previous games. Lolo 3 is also TWICE as large as both of the other games when it comes to the amount of levels, and this is presented with a false ending half-way through the game. So when the player thinks he might have beaten the game, in reality the real challenge has just started. (Not least because the second part of the game includes some really really hardcore puzzles.) There's also a twist that the character you're playing will be kidnapped by King Egger, so you'll have to use the remaining character to rescue Lolo or Lala depending on the one you used. So if you used Lolo you'll be forced to use Lala in the last part of the game. (I used Lala for the most part, so she ended up being kidnapped, so I got the traditional run of using Lolo in the second half of the game to rescue Lala.)

For anyone who has played these games you know it can be quite a challenge. Its sometimes very easy to give up, because sitting down with the same level every day if you’re completely out of ideas can be extremely tedious and even depressing. Although on the plus side its a huge relief when you figure out a room you’ve been struggling with forever. Few things top the experience of figuring out a level that has been bugging you for days. Luckily for me having both Lolo 1 and Lolo 2 behind me the first half of Lolo 3 wasn’t very problematic. After that I have to admit there was many puzzles that proved to be daunting. The difficulty goes up from there on, although I have to admit the ordering of the difficulty could seem uneven. Sometimes a near impossible level would be followed by a sequence of easy ones. No rhyme or reason. Its possible certain puzzles are more difficult for others though. 

My goal was to not use a walkthrough once. I really insisted I would take my time instead.  
I ended up using walkthrough twice still. First 9-4 appeared. That means Level 9 Room 4. 

15-5 was the second room I had to use walkthrough on. I hated this room so much. Kind of the same deal as with 9-4. I felt like I had exhausted everything so many times, and thought I had it figured out, but one small block seemed to be missing, and I couldn't figure it out. After over a week of on and off playing I gave up. I was quite depressed just sitting down with the level. It didn't help that other things going in my life made it difficult to concentrate. I finally gave in and looked online at what you were supposed to do. When I saw the answer it felt like I had been lazy and not exhausted the order of the process as much as I should have had. Its too bad. That was the second room I had to use a walkthrough on. I now feared I was getting lazy. Another problem: At this point I also realized I had been playing the Lolo games for 4 months and I was growing very exhaused by Lolo. I still had at least many many rooms. I took a break for a couple of weeks.

Then I came back with a fresher mind. I remember being stuck forever on an early room on Level 16 as well for a while, but I figured it out. When I finally got to Level 17, the LAST LEVEL, it was exciting, but I expected the final rooms to be puzzles that would kick my ass completely. Luckily no, the rooms were challenging, sure, but I beat a room or two almost every day. None of the rooms were as difficult as some of the earlier ones from my point of view. I eventually met the Final Boss, and he was as expected not super tough. None of the bosses in the game is tough, but there’s some that had more challenging and unpredictable patterns than King Egger. It was almost like a dessert beating him to a pulp. 

Where did I play it?
When I was in filmschool in 2008 I played it a whole Saturday with a buddy and classmate there who had bought it on Nintendo Wii. I’m not sure I ever played it before that or how we started playing it. It looks like Nintendo World Cup, a game I owned as a child, but this plays like a beat’em up game. 

Did I beat it?
Yes, we actually spent the time to beat it. I think it must have been a long Saturday. I remember it was exhausting beating it one sitting. I still remember it as a great game. Especially for a 2 player game. 

Its really about rescuing a girlfriend of the protagonist from gangmembers. You have to fight quite a few bosses, and then there's a final boss at the end. Its a bit different because you have to eat and go to a sauna at several parts of the cities he game to increase stats. There's special moves to be bought and several weapons to use. 

Later experiences: 
I kind of wanted to wait so I could have the friend come and play it with me, as he already helped beating Bubble Bobble and Double Dragon 2 with me for the run. Him living in another country at the time made it kind of tricky to arrange, but I got him over finally. Sadly things happened, and he only had time to stay one day. We started playing River City Ransom and it was fun playing at again, we got perhaps 1/3 in, but we didn’t find enough time to actually beat it. A little bit bitter, but fine.

So I ended up just playing the game for myself.

As a challenge I played the game on the Advanced Mode and not Easy Mode. (Its quite possible we played it on Easy in 2008.) I beat it in a couple of days, and while I normally keep myself from not playing too much in a day(I consider gaming just a side-hobby and I never sit all day playing a game), but this time I spent quite a few hours. I couldn’t put it down. I kind of dislike the game for being too addictive, but from a gamedesign perspective thats probably a compliment. Its me too. I get OCD when it comes to grinding and buying everything, doing everything. Just like in 2008 I was also quite exhausted playing it.

I leveled up maximum on absolutely everything before going to final bosses. You don’t need to do that at all. I was a bit overpowered but I still managed to die a few times. I may not be an expert at these type of games.

The game is a bit unique. Mixing rpg and beat’em up is at least something I hadn’t heard of before. Its a pretty game. Not much more to say. 

Difficulty: 
6/10 on Advanced Mode / 3/10 on Easy Mode.

North And South (1989)

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

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?
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