Review ~ Final Fantasy IV DS

Okay, this game is a little old. Well, technically the game itself is a LOT old, but this incarnation isn't so bad.

So on Saturday I finally beat the game, which I had previously complained about here and here. 


(Oh, and this review contains no crappy iPhone photos taken in a car.)


Let's get down to it.


Final Fantasy IV originally came out for the Super Nintendo a number of years ago. It has been reincarnated several times since, and I'm pretty sure I own all of those efforts. However, this version of the game was improved with new graphics, cut scenes and junk, which refreshed it a bit. After starting and stopping this game so many times, I was determined to finally beat it. (Success! Yay!)


Story: In the early days, Squaresoft (remember those days?) was obsessed with crystals, apparently, because it seems like the story of all their early titles revolves around them in some way. This game is no exception. An evil guy is stealing all the crystals in the world for an evil purpose and it's your job to stop him! OMG! To the 16bit airship! Okay, so the story isn't going to win any prizes, but it's really not bad as far as early RPG's go. There's a clear purpose and actually plenty of twists and turns along the way. What more do you need, really?


Characters: At most points in the game you have a 5 character party. A what? Yeah, it's worth repeating. 5 CHARACTERS. IN YOUR PARTY. AT THE SAME TIME. We can only dream of that in this gaming era, but the fact is you kinda need every last character you can wrangle into your band of misfits. But more on that later. As far as the characters themselves go, aside from Cecil, your main dude, and to a lesser extent Kain, his pal, there's not too much character development. They all have their own personalities though: Rosa, the annoying homemaker wanna be; Rydia, the mysterious one; Edge, the brash one; Yang, so full of pride and honor; Palom and Porom, the vivacious kids; Tellah, the old guy; Edward, the sissy; Cid, hardworking and determined - you get the idea. You don't get to pick and choose what characters you want to use at any point in the game. You use who you have and you deal with it. Characters rotate in and out of your party, but unlike most other games, they don't usually come back. It kind of makes it hard to power level, because there's a good chance you'll be losing a character or two in the not too distant future. One of the characters you finish the game off with doesn't show up until the final few hours of gameplay.


Battle System: There's really nothing special here. It's pretty basic for an old school RPG. Each character has a set job they're forced into. It comes with various abilities. You learn new spells and the like by leveling up. You can't see what spells or abilities you're going to learn, nor can you choose or control it in any way. There's no skill to learning stuff except grinding. However, there was a new augment system added into this version that reaps pretty good abilities - but if you don't understand how this system works, as I didn't, you'll miss out on a lot of good stuff. The game never really explains how this works. Once your character learns an augment they can use that ability. Some are battle abilities that you can add to your menu to use on the field, but others are default abilities you just have all the time. I strongly suggest using one of the good guides you can find at Gamefaqs if you want to get all the augments. It's worth it. Because a lot of them are pretty awesome.

Gameplay: Battles move fast in this game, even when you don't have the ATB set to active. (If you're not a gamer, that last sentence will mean nothing.) I found several bosses to be very difficult to defeat, despite being over leveled. (And there were even a few random encounter enemies - dragons, mostly. WTF is with the crystals and the dragons?! - that slaughtered my ass.) I was over level 70 and still had a hard time with the last boss - something I never have a problem with in Final Fantasy's newer installments. Cecil was the only one with decent HP when it finally fell. Another character had 2 HP and everyone else was KO'd. So you remember when I said you'd need every last character? Yeah. But there's more to this game than level grinding. Many of these bosses and enemies require good strategy to go down. Not just brute force.



Graphics: The updated graphics are pretty, if kind of cutesy. You even kinda wanna cuddle armored Kain. For a DS game, though, it's fine. The game has voice acting in most of the cut scenes, which really isn't a lot, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. The new graphics and updating really does a lot to make this game fresh, but at the same time proves that older games can stand the test of time.


Sidequests: The older Final Fantasy games aren't really known for their side quests - but there a few. Most of them involve getting better summon or equipment and can be completed later in the game. There's also the obnoxious Namingway side quest, which I never finished and don't feel about. If he wants to wait forever for that stupid pudding, so be it. You also get items for map completion, which I thought was a nice touch and really had me going into every nock and cranny of the dungeons in order to reap the rewards - which were pretty decent, especially towards the end of the game.


Overall: Great classic RPG with good story and characters, solid gameplay and appropriate, enjoyable updates. Fans of both new and old school RPG's will have fun with this one - I know I did. It really does stand the test of time.


93 out of 100

Video Games I've Beaten - Part One

So in my blog about Super Mario Galaxy I mentioned I was going to embark on a quest to make a list of every game I've ever beaten.

Quest complete.


This is only part one of the list - although I haven't beaten an overwhelming number of games in the twenty or so I've been playing, I didn't wanna go and list them all at once. So today we're cover the earliest systems: NES, Genesis and SNES.


Here were the rules of list:

• Finishing the main story of the game and seeing the ending counts as beating it. I didn't have to do all the extras/side quests/whatever.
• ROM games are okay as long as no cheats were used.
• It didn't have to be a game I played alone.

Here are some things to remember when you're reading this list:

• I did not own a lot of games as a kid at all. 
  
• I relied very heavily on looking at the games I own in compiling this list. Over the years I've traded in some games and forgotten about others. I know some games got left out.
• I play a lot of games you can't beat i.e Animal Crossing, Mario Tennis, etc.
• I didn't count games I replayed when they were re-released on another system.
  

Okay, enough of that. Here's the damn list.


NES

Super Mario Bros. 
Yeah, the original, of course. I can remember my struggle to get past "Cheep Cheep Land", which was what I called world 2-3. But finally I made my way all the way to Bowser's last stand...and I ran on him/used the elevator. (I don't remember. This was a long time ago.) And I rescued the Princess once and for all. And I was stunned at what I had accomplished. I was expecting some kind of major payoff for this - not being told I could replay the game with fuzzy beetles in place of Goombas. Oh well.

Super Mario Bros. 3
Still one of my favorite games of all time. I owned one of the earliest issues of Nintendo Power that was basically nothing more than a full walk through of this game. In the days before the internet, that was a big deal. Remember the hands in the last world? Did they scare the crap out of you, too? Where were they coming from?!

Barbie
This game deserves a blog all it's own. The story was anything but deep, but for a little kid some of the game play was pretty difficult. One of the last levels involved jumping on a bunch of narrow music notes that were hovering over a moving platform that took you all the way back to the beginning if you fell. Oh, and did I mention that Barbie jumped like a stiff piece of plastic, too.

The Little Mermaid
I was a little girl, and little girls had girly games. I was obsessed with The Little Mermaid, so of course I owned the game. Goes to show you how early they started making movies into video games.

Maniac Mansion
I didn't beat this until I was much older, and I'm glad of it. How scary was this game? That creepy blue guy finding you and locking you in the basement. And don't even get me started on how hard it is. If you don't have the right combination of kids, forget it.


Genesis

Crystal's Pony Tale
This was a ROM. Shut up.




SNES

Super Mario World
I still love this game. I could replay it over and over. I actually finished everything you could do in this game - star levels and all.

Super Mario Bros. - The Lost Levels
Maybe you noticed, but Super Mario 2 was missing from my list. I never defeated Wart. But I did beat the REAL SMB2.

Kirby Super Star
Still my favorite Kirby game ever. I beat all the games that were included under the Super Star heading - my favorite being the one where you found all the treasures.

Donkey Kong Country
One of those games that definitely changed how I looked at games.

Donkey Kong Country 2
Probably tied for my favorite SNES game.

Donkey Kong Country 3
Tied with this. What a great game. Remember when RARE made good games? Me too...

Yoshi's Island
As much as I like this game, it was often frustrating as hell.

Super Mario Kart
Oh, the hours I spent playing this game. I guess you could argue that you can't really "beat" this game, but I disagree. If you beat the Star cup grand prix on 150cc - you've beaten it.




Next - N64, PSX and GBA.

How I Found Video Games, Or How Video Games Found Me (part two)

Part One

Part Two: The Super Years

I remember being told to sit down in the kitchen one Christmas by my parents. All I wanted that year was a Super Nintendo. I don't remember what year it was, but the system wasn't brand new or anything. Anyway, I had already opened all my presents from "Santa" and there was no SNES to be found. But my parents had news for me. Apparently my cool Uncle (same uncle who got me a video game for my Communion present) was going to get one for me. But he didn't have it just yet. That was fine. I waited excitedly for my Super Nintendo to arrive, and when it did I set it up myself. My parents were very impressed. Nothing was about to stand between me and my new system.

I had played a little SNES at friend's houses and the one game I always played was Super Mario World. Well my bundle came with a game titled Super Mario All Stars. Included on the cartridge was Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3. And The Lost Levels, or the real Super Mario Bros. 2. I thought it was great to have all those Mario games in one place. Once again it seemed Mario would be the dominant game series for this console, but a new kid was coming to town.

But I had Super Mario World now, and that was what I played. I thought it was a great game and I still do. Yoshi quickly won me over. I liked to take him with me wherever I went. Yoshi, unfortunately, did not feel the same way, because he didn't care to join me in the haunted houses or the fortresses. Even after I fed him all those berries. Ungrateful dinosaur. I remember I was almost to the end when my cousin came over one day and somehow my save got erased. I still don't know quite what happened with that, but I was pissed. I remember saying something like, "Well I better start playing now! I want to get to the Forest of Illusion by tonight!" That's something only a nerd child would say.

This was the first game where I really wanted to do EVERYTHING. I was determined to beat all the Star World levels and find all the Star World entrances. I found all the secret exits for all the red levels. Some gave me more trouble than others. I remember finding out how to actually get to the secret exit for the Butter Bridge level drove me nuts. The first time I tackled the Special levels that had all the total 90's expression names (Tubular! Awesome!) I found them all really hard. I especially remember being frustrated by Tubular. In that level you basically had to float the whole time using those p-balloons, and of course there were tons of enemies and other stuff in the way. I felt like I played that level hundreds of times before I actually beat it. But I finally finished. I got through all the extra levels. And I was rewarded with...a different color scheme for the map, and some of the enemies changed their appearance. Not so great. But at least I could say that I finally finished everything there was to do in a video game.

Super Putty - This game was a gift. Super Putty was like some kind of alien or something. He was a blue ball of...putty that wasn't very interesting. It wasn't a horrible game but there was nothing about it I really found too interesting. I'd play it, get to a certain point, die, and then put it down. Not so super.

Zoop - They showed commercials for this game on TV all the time. Whoever made it totally wanted it to be the next Tetris. Only they failed. Zoop is a puzzle game. Only it doesn't have blocks. I think it had like circles, or something. As you can tell by my awesome description I didn't play this game too much. In fact I don't even remember how to play at all. Shows what an impression it made on me.

Donkey Kong Country - Mario was the main man in my video game life until the monkey came along. I don't remember exactly how I got introduced to Donkey Kong. For some reason I vaguely remember my dad renting it for me, and when I liked it, he bought it. At the time the graphics on this game were absolutely amazing. I'll never forget being so in awe of how "real" everything looked. At the time, this game really was pretty great graphics wise. And it was pretty great game play wise too. I liked the dynamic of Donkey and Diddy being a team and you could switch between them at will. The levels were fun, but not too easy (for me at the time.) I remember a level called "Barrel Cannon Canyon" that I'm pretty sure was one of the last levels in the first area of the game. Towards the end of the level you jumped in a barrel and then had to keep shooting yourself into different barrels to get across the way. There were a lot of barrels there, and they moved in all kinds of directions. I was not used to this kind of game play, and I could not shoot those monkeys into those barrels for the life of me. I even went as far as holding a ruler up to the screen so I could see when they were in a straight line. I'm embarrassed to admit that ever happened, but I eventually got the hang of it and I'm now proud to say I'm a monkey barrel shooting pro. I loved this game, so of course I grabbed the sequel that followed it.

Donkey Kong Country 2 - This game, obviously, is the sequel to DKC. Except this one was even more fun. Out of all three games for SNES I like your two playable characters in this game the best. Why? Because Diddy and Dixie are both small and easy to move. There's no hulking mass of a character in this game. Plus Dixie can use her ponytail to hover for awhile. I've always been a fan of that. This game had a 'Lost World' you unlocked with coins you earned from the bonus games. In order to complete the Lost World you had to pretty much complete every bonus game. Not such an easy task, considering they hid some of those barrels pretty damn well. My favorite world in this game was the Kremling amusement park. What I didn't like about this game was how if you wanted to save more than one time in a level you had to PAY for it. WTF, Wrinkly Kong? Fallen on hard times?

Kirby Super Star - 8 games in one! I remember that being plastered on the outside of the box. I liked Kirby so I was very excited to own this game. Especially when there were 8 games. Some of them were more like mini-games, but there were several longer 'full-length' games as well. Kirby had more powers than ever, and you could even have a friend play alongside you (or the computer.) My favorite of the games was the one where you had to find the treasure chests. I don't think I ever found them all.

Donkey Kong Country 3 - The third game in the ever awesome Donkey Kong series, and my favorite of the SNES bunch. This game just had so much to it. There was more than just completing levels and collecting bananas. There was even more to do than finding bonus barrels. This time you had to collect different items and banana birds and interact with bears. Yeah. Bears. Plus you actually needed Funky Kong in this one! Previously the probably pot smoking Kong had been kind of useless. But now you had to rely on him to update your ride in order to move onto to new areas. There was also a Lost World in this one, and it was the hardest one yet to find. I remember you had to ride around these four rocks that were in the middle of the water. And you had to do it in the right directions and a certain number of times and stuff. This game had some tough levels in it too. I remember one of the later levels had all the controls inverted. And I'm pretty sure you had to swim. There are two things I don't do well in video games - swimming and flying. So for me, swimming with inverted controls wasn't the easiest thing in the world at first.

This was another game that I wound up completing in full, but I have to admit it wasn't until years and years later when I had access to the internet. Told you that Lost World was hard.

Yoshi's Island - Oh, a game about Yoshi! And annoying, crying baby Mario! This was a solid title. I liked playing as Yoshi. What I didn't like was chasing down the sobbing baby Mario every time you got hit by an enemy. After awhile you just wanted to let the bad guys have him. I remember how you got a score at the end of each level based on how much stuff you managed to collect. It would be out of 100 points so I would equate the scores to school. So if I got 75 on a level, Yoshi got a C.

Street Fighter II - I don't know why this is even on here. This wasn't even really my game. It was my sister's, and I don't even know why she got it. This was the first fighting game we ever owned. I almost never played it. I could never really get into fighting games. I didn't have the patience to memorize all those different button combinations. Whenever I played this game I would play as E. Honda and just use his hand slap attack repeatedly. That always seemed pretty effective.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors - I didn't own this game, my cousin did. And together he and I teamed up (he as the boy and I as the girl, of course) to take on the masses of zombies, monsters, killer toys, vampires, giant babies, and chainsaw wielding maniacs that roamed the levels of this game. This game was awesome but it was hard. Whenever we were together we played it and tried to get a little bit farther than we did last time. We turned down the sound in level 4, the first chainsaw wielding maniac level, because it freaked us out. It took us a long time to beat the level with the giant baby stomping around. And the level with the freaky giant snakes in the ground really had us stumped. Plus if you ran out of bazookas, or god forbid keys, you were in a lot of trouble. And the worst part was there was no saving in this game! Instead there were long, convoluted Bomberman style codes that had whoever was watching (my sister and other cousin usually) fumbling for a pen. But these codes we did save carefully. We would need them for the next time we took the zombies on. This game is a classic.

Kid Klown - You probably know by now that me and circus related games don't go together too well. And this is no exception. This was another game that belonged to my cousins, and they didn't really like it. I didn't really like it either, but everyone got such a big kick out of me playing it (because of my constant cursing the name of Kid Klown) that I played it a lot when I was over at their house. Kid Klown is this stupid Klown that is trying to save this girl (who I think was another clown) from this evil guy who keeps trying to blow things up. There were different kinds of themed levels like they have in every other game. Stuff like a woods level, a lava level, a city street and an ice level. I remember the woods level best because it was the first level and there was no saving to be had in this fantastic piece of gaming history.

Anyway, at the beginning of this level, just like every other level, you see the evil guy setting up his explosives and dragging the beginning of the fuse really, really far away from it. If this guy really wanted to blow some shit up he shouldn't have made such a long fuse. Anyway, your job is to beat the fire to the explosive before it can blow the bridge the hell up. Along your route there will be many balloons. You have to grab the end of the balloons to see what's inside. Your object is to get the 4 suits: hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. Some of the balloons hurt you and some give you coins and stuff. All you basically can do is move forward and jump. You cannot move backwards. So if you move past the end of a balloon even a little bit, you can't get it. This is where most of my cursing stems from. Also the fact that this game is just stupid. If you beat the fire to the end but don't have all the stupid suits (the point of this being...?) you literally watch as the bad guy sets up his explosives all over again! You literally stand there catching your breath and waiting for him to be done! Why not just kick him in the crotch and steal the stupid explosives?! No. No. Because that would make sense. The lesson - games involving circus things are bad.

Mario Kart - Wow. I seriously suck for almost forgetting about this game. Aside from Red Racer, which I played a couple of times on the NES (ugh), this was my first real racing title. And I loved it. Partly because of the the Mario characters, but mostly because it was just plain fun and not too hard. I like how there were different ranks you could play and there were plenty of different tracks. I fell off Rainbow Road tons of times before I got it down. I loved the Bowser's Castle and Ghost House tracks as well. The multiplayer aspects of this game also rocked, and I'm not talking about a second player in the Grand Prix. My sister and I loved to try and destroy one another's balloons. We could play that game for hours. It was one of the few games she'd play with me. Oh, and my character of choice? Toad, or Koopa. Give me small and speedy any day.

Yes, the super years were good years. From Mario I moved onto to Donkey Kong, gaining a new game obsession. I had to have all the Donkey Kong games. So when I heard there was a game coming out for Nintendo 64, I had to ask for one for Christmas. My parents, however, had other ideas...

Stay tuned for the final section of this saga - Part Three: Another Game In Town

How I Found Video Games, Or How Video Games Found Me (part one)

Part One: The Beginning

I got a NES when I was six. It was a Christmas present given to me by my grandparents and there are many pictures of me happily posing with the box. Since that was such a long time ago, I don't remember if I specifically requested this gift, or if they just figured it would make a good gift. Either way it doesn't really matter. I had my first system, and my life as a gamer had begun.

Technically I already had a video game system. Or my parents did anyway. We had an Atari, and I remember playing some Pac Man and Breakout as a kid. Those were my favorite titles of the small collection my parents had. I'm not even sure why exactly they had an Atari. Maybe just because it was the thing to have back then. Neither of my parents really play video games. I don't even think I ever saw my dad play it. But I digress.

So I had an NES. And not only did I have an NES but I had the super awesome pack that came with the light gun and the power pad. And the game that came with it had Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt and Track Meet. I liked Duck Hunt okay, but I wasn't much good at it. I cheated a lot by going right up to the screen to shoot things. Track Meet was more fun, but you needed a few people to play it. Even if it was just my sister and I we would make up names to fill up all six character slots. We used to use a chair to cheat at the jumping. You couldn't stay on too long or you'd stumble and fall! It was a learned art.

But Super Mario Bros. was my favorite. At first I wasn't very good at it. At all. In fact it took me a very looooooooong time just to beat "Cheep Cheep World". This was the name we had given the level where all the Cheep Cheeps jump out at you. Cheep Cheep World was my first video game struggle. I was very proud when I beat it. From there I had to worry about the rest of the game. And of course this was the dark ages where you couldn't save. So every time you had to stop playing and shut the system off you had to start all over again.

My sister also had me convinced for a long time that it was possible to jump over the flag pole in the game. She claimed to have seen it at a friends house. Well I tried and tried but I was never able to do it. Lesson learned - never believe your little sister.

I was only 6, so it took me a long time to finally beat Super Mario Bros. Probably more than a year at least. I remember feeling so proud when I finally beat the game. Then when it asked if I wanted to do a new quest, I was surprised to see the same worlds with fuzzy beetles replacing the Goombas. Guess I was expecting something a little more impressive.

My mother liked Super Mario Bros. as well. I picked up a book about "How to Win at Nintendo Games" (I swear that was the title) at a book fair at my school one year, and one of the tricks in the book was how to get quick 1-ups in the game. The trick was you had to take this turtle shell at the end of level 2-3 and kick it repeatedly against the brown brick like structure it had been walking on. After awhile you'd start getting extra life after extra life. Well I tried and tried but I could never pull this off. My mother, however, somehow managed to master it. To this day I still cannot do that stupid trick. But my mom's got it down like it's second nature.

I never had too many titles for Nintendo. My parents rarely bought me any games. But I had a small collection of titles I enjoyed playing (and some I didn't.). These included:

Super Mario Bros. 2 - I don't remember where or how I got this game, but I never really liked it. The only thing I really liked about it was that you got to play Princess Peach and she could fly. It never felt like a Mario title to me, so I wasn't surprised years later to find out it wasn't. I lost interest in this game and found it kind of hard, so I never beat it. Even now I have no interest in finishing it.

Marble Madness - Oh, I was no good at this game at all. I could not move that stupid marble around. I think maybe I could get to the second level tops before I would keep crashing the marble off a cliff and breaking it, or falling down an endless pit and hearing that creepy scream. (Since when do marbles scream?) Year later, after never getting anywhere in this game and being constantly frustrated by trying to navigate that stupid marble around the totally unrealistic map, I eventually gave it to a friend. She was able to beat it no problem. Go figure.

Spy vs. Spy - I remember getting this gift as a gift for my Communion from my Uncle. (Yeah, cool Uncle!) This was a fun title. We mostly didn't bother with trying to get all the objects and the briefcase and then escaping. (It annoyed us to no end that you couldn't hold more than one item if you didn't have that stupid briefcase. You should have come in with the briefcase then, you stupid spy!) Instead we would plant traps EVERYWHERE and since you lost time every time you got blown up, whoever ran out of time first lost. We always thought it was so morbid that after you died you turned into an angel and went to heaven. Then how did you come back??

Circus Caper - Omg, if this is not one of the worst games ever made, some companies must have churned out some real crap over the years. I hate this game so much I can't help but go into a lot of detail, so bear with me. You have to understand a lot to get a full picture of how bad this game is. I got this game for Christmas one year from my parents. I don't know why they chose this particular game but I'm sure the words 'Bargain Bin' were involved. First this game has the creepiest premise EVER. Two kids, a boy, Timmy, and his sister, whose name I can't remember, want to go to a circus. No idea where their parents are. Probably drunk in an alley somewhere. Anyway, the kids don't have any money because their parents are drunken bums, and the circus is sold out anyway. Aw, shucks. Oh! But this creepy pedophile clown will let you win tickets if you win his sleazy dice game! Now this is the intro you get every time before you play the stupid game. The clown never explains how this game works, and the combination of the dice changes every time. And yet you still win. Every time. Rigged? I think so. Oh! But the creepy clown only has one ticket left! Timmy, being ever so kind, lets his sister have the ticket. He'll wait for her right by the exit! So she goes into the circus tent. This is where the music turns creepy. The show is over, but there's no sign of sister! Then this sleazy guy appears, announces he's Mr. Magic (Yeah, nobody pulled that name out of their ass), he's got the sister, and he's not giving her back. He has no reason to do this, other than the fact that he's a pedophile. "You can't have her!" Timmy cries, but it's to no avail. So Timmy has to go into the circus after his sister.

After that engaging plot, I bet you can't wait to play, right? I mean what child doesn't dream of running into a weird circus at night that's just crawling with clowns? Sadly, not only is the story godawful, but the game play is too. Timmy can walk around or jump crappily. He has a weak punch or a kick that makes him look like he's having a seizure. He also has a slew of crappy items he can use that pop out of enemies when he kills them. I don't know what's more disturbing, the fact that the child is killing clowns or that the clowns are carrying bricks, yo-yos, soccer balls and snack cakes. There were probably more items but they were so useless I forgot them. In the first part of the first level what you basically do is kill clowns, and jump across the mouths of alligators that are opening and closing. Oh, or you can play a carnival game. But let's talk about the alligators first. Okay, first of all, alligators have nothing to do with the circus. Just because most circuses have animals doesn't mean they're zoos. Secondly, why are there random pits full of water in the middle of the floor? Isn't that a hazard for the people working at the circus? Now, saying that jumping across the closed mouths of alligators is a death trap is like saying the sky is blue. But this is a video game, and weird things are to be expected I guess. But Timmy's jumping is so spastic and the mouths of these alligators are so narrow that it gives the phrase 'death trap' a whole new meaning. If hit the open mouth of the alligator (which of course is open most of the time), you die. If you hit the water, you die. Timmy's drunk parents never taught him to swim apparently. That pretty much sums up the first half of the first level. What's in the second half? A jet pack. Now this kid can't even jump right. What do you think giving him a jet pack is going to do to him?

Throughout the first part of the level you will see curtains you can press up in front of and go into. What are these? Carnival games. Now in a circus where people kidnap kids and have dangerous alligators snapping their jaws in the middle of the floor, I guess a game where you have to jump over a moving ball of fire is pretty much expected. You're accompanied by a bear (Hello, ASPCA?) and you have to keep both yourself and Smoky away from the fire. And if you guessed you and Smoky both move like molasses, you're absolutely right! The game is over when either you or Smoky gets torched by the searing hot flame. And I mean torched! When you get hit by the flame the image you get makes you glad this game only had 8-bit graphics! Even then it looks like you're going to need some serious time in intensive care and a lot of plastic surgery to recover! But the of course you exit the game without a scratch on you. Well, until you get mauled in the alligator pit.

There's also a fairy who's in this game for some reason. What is the point of the fairy? Well, if you get really badly hurt she'll come and play a dice game with you to see if you're lucky enough to live. If that doesn't sound screwed up enough, you should know that the fairy does come often enough...after you're dead. I think the fairy is too busy playing craps in a back alley with that pedophile clown to come and rescue your poor, stupid ass. She's real useful.

So, what's after the jet pack part? I don't know. I never got that far. The booklet that comes with the game goes on to describe each of the levels in some detail. When we were kids my sister and I were convinced they wrote those descriptions so they could pretend they actually made a whole game. Now I guess there's a whole game in there, but I don't know who'd actually wanna play it.

Barbie - I remember my dad buying this game for me. I think I rented this first, liked it, and he got it for me. Is it pretty stupid? You betcha. The concept of the game is basically Barbie is dreaming about all the stuff she has to do the next day and after you complete each area you get a new accessory or piece of clothing Barbie can wear on her date with Ken or whatever. The different areas included the mall, being a mermaid, and the soda shop. You don't really have a life bar, just Z's you lose every time you get hit. If you lose all the Z's Barbie wakes up, but you can choose to go right back to sleep anyway. What really annoyed me about this game was that Barbie could barely jump. Guess those pointy feet and high heels don't make for good air time. Barbie also uses charms from her charm bracelet to interact with the different things around her. Some of the stuff was kind of cute, especially the walking food and drink in the soda shop area. I have to admit that even though it's pretty lame, I do like this game, and I did beat it. The last level involves jumping up and down to make these three coins spin at the same time. It's pretty frustrating. But there are two other levels that really stick out in my mind. There's this level in the mall section where all you do is wait for these waterfalls to stop running water so you can walk by. Yeah. That's the whole level. It's so boring. Guess Barbie's too afraid of getting her hair wet. The other level was very frustrating. It involved Barbie jumping onto narrow musical notes, moving records and tiny little spiky balls all over a moving platform. So if you fell, it was all the way back to the beginning. And because Barbie jumps like an elephant, this was not an easy level to navigate. Since the rest of the game is pretty easy, this level really sticks out.

Jack Nicklaus Golf - I don't remember when I got this game. Now I like golf to some extent, but I didn't when I was a kid. My favorite part was making up names for the male or female golfers.

The Little Mermaid - I think this game was made towards the end of the NES era, because the graphics on it were pretty good. I was a huge fan of the movie (still am!) so it's no surprise really that I had that game. For a game based on a movie it really wasn't bad. I enjoyed playing this game, and I did beat it.

Super Mario Bros. 3 - To this day it is still my favorite Mario title. I remember my friend had this game first, and all I wanted to do was play it. I loved all the different suits for Mario, I loved all the different themed worlds, I loved the graphics, I loved the world maps, I loved the bonus games and items, I loved the story, I loved all the Koopa kids, I loved everything about this game. For a NES game it was pretty complicated. I played this game all the time. I even bought an issue of Nintendo Power that was totally dedicated to walking you through the game. (With the help of that magazine, I did beat the game. I loved that issue and kept very good care of it for YEARS. I wish I still had it. This was it.)

Kirby - I didn't actually own this game until years later, but I picked it once to rent and loved it. So every time I was allowed to rent a game I chose this one. I loved the extra games you could play, and Kirby, who could fly, was different from the characters I had played. That stupid cloud boss at the end of Grape Garden (I think that was the level.) always killed me. Stupid cloud. My favorite mini game was the crane game where you picked up the Kirby stuffed animals for extra lives.

Mickey Mousecapade - Now I have always loved Disney, but this game is pretty stupid. If they really wanted you to play through the whole thing, why did they give you the cheat codes for skipping levels in the instruction manual? (That really explains the level 'The Woods' pretty well. I never, ever, could figure out how to get past that level. So I guess I'm thankful for the cheat codes, because otherwise I never would have gotten past that.) Of course, if you skip the first level, you never get Minnie's shooting power. And without her shooting power, Minnie is totally useless. Luckily my sister would often agree to play Minnie (who Mickey treats like crap in this game. He's always yelling at her.) because otherwise I would be forced to drag Minnie's unwilling form around. It was a pain in the neck to get her to follow you sometimes. If she didn't land on the same platform as you, forget it. I used to like when so got kidnapped, just so I didn't have to deal with her anymore. I never wound up beating this game.

The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventures of Link - I don't care if I don't have the title exactly right. Because I hate this game. I actually got it at a garage sale, and it had saves on it from the previous kid who had played it. (Saves...ooooh...) That kid had gotten pretty far. So what did I do, genius that I am? I deleted them. And thus begins my hatred of all Link games.

I had never played a game like this at all. I had no clue what I was doing. Walking around, black things swarming all around you that you had to fight with your tiny sword. There was this passed out girl lying in this mausoleum type place for no reason I could figure out. The people in the towns were weird and all looked the same. Some creepy wizard wanted me to come down to his basement and teach me magic. Tons of places were blocked by rocks. It was no good. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do or why. And I found out that I didn't really care. When you got the 'Game Over' screen, it said: "Game Over. Return of Ganon". I didn't know who or what Ganon was, but I figured he was probably better off running things because Link clearly didn't know what he was doing. The game of no direction. I finally gave up trying to play it. Maybe I could have moved on and eventually given Link a second chance, but instead I decided I like it better if I stay away from Link related games and he stays away from me. Guess you could say this scarred me for life.

Bomberman - This game was HARD. After awhile, those enemies started moving fast. Or you ran out of time looking for the door. Or you accidentally blew up the door and more enemies came flooding up. I never survived that situation. The powerups were great, though. I really liked this game and had a lot of fun playing it, even if I never really got that far in the scheme of things. (This game had a million levels, or so it seemed.) I dutifully wrote down the long and confusing passwords every time I had a game over screen, but I always seemed to lose them. Stupid days before saving with the stupid passwords that seemed to go on forever. Every time you got a game over you were screaming 'Grab a pen!' to whomever happened to be nearby.

Tetris - I think everybody's played Tetris. I liked being able to change the music, but I hated when you were about to lose and the music got really fast. That really made me more nervous. Thanks a lot. Anyway, I was never too great at this game. I could get to about level 9 before the blocks became too overwhelming. My mom, however, is great at this game. It's kind of embarassing for your mom to be better at a game than you.

I also had a propoganda title where you played a game involving Spot, the 7-Up mascot, but I didn't play that one too much. This is pretty much the list of games I played as a kid. And in some ways they really started to shape me as a gamer. I started liking Mario titles, and, thanks to Link, it was years before I'd go near an RPG.

Eventually the Super Nintendo came out. And I didn't want to play regular Nintendo anymore when there was a super one out there. Stay tuned for part 2, The Super Years.