Everyone loves the NES.  If you don’t, you’re a communist and R.O.B. the Robot will physically abuse while you sleep.  Lots of classic games to point to and slather with fanboy love, too: Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Super Dodge Ball, River City Ransom, Little Nemo etc.

But how about those games that may have only appealed to you way back when?  The under-appreciated losers of the bunch?

Dave:  Our parents were insistent on not buying us a Nintendo for fear that we would stay inside all day and rot our brains (and I have the silky smooth jump shot to prove it).

To get my fix I had to go over other people’s houses to play.  The best scheme I had going was to finagle a babysitting job at my neighbors.  Granted I only got paid two dollars an hour (!), but the fringe benefit–all-I-can-play NES–was priceless.

One of the games that I played constantly, and, beat, was a side-scrollnig actioner called Astyanax.  I remember very little about the plot except that you were a scantily-clad knight with a large sword and you were attacked by various floating bad guys and geometrical shapes.

A quick survey of the game on the Internet reveals that it was far from the greatest respected titled, but man did I love it.  And beating the game–my first ever NES completion–was a thrill.  Putting out the grease fire started by the kids I was supposed to be watching instead of screwing around with video games was also a thrill.

Adam: The answer to this question is River City Ransom. It is the greatest game ever created. Dave will be mad because he listed it as a game worthy of fanboy love, and Jon will fistfight me for beating him to this, because it’s his user icon, but I care not. The correct and just thing to do is to tell the world about how good this game is. Obscurity be damned! EVERYONE MUST KNOW.

For the uninitiated, River City Ransom was Double Dragon by way of Super Dodge Ball and Dragon Warrior. For reasons unknown, Ryan’s girlfriend Cyndi has been kidnapped and held hostage in the high school by gang leader “Slick”. That is his name, so you know he is bad news. Ryan and his friend Alex take off across town, battling through lesser gangs to reach River City High and save the girl. Along the way, they take unnecessary steam baths, eat things they never should eat, and visit magic shops hidden under bridge overpasses.

The combat system was fun, punctuated by the hilarious calls of vanquished foes who would spontaneously run from combat, only to return with brass knuckles or rocks to bash your face in. The game was hard, and complicated by the unexplained RPG elements. Each foe dropped obnoxiously large coins that bounced up and down, taunting you to pick them up. The money is exchanged in town for goods and services that are totally unexplained as to their function, increasing stats that don’t seem to have any bearing on your ability to beat people up. If you died, you ended up back in the last village you visited, with your pockets rifled. With no lives system to speak of, you were free to beat your way through the crowds again, but every death made it harder and harder to recoup your finances and your wasted stamina and energy levels.

Seriously, best Nintendo game ever. There was a Game Boy Advanced port, River City Ransom EX that updated the graphics and tweaked the combat system, and it’s quite lovely in of its own right, but nothing beats the original version. I can sing the songs in my sleep.

Adam: Okay, okay. Apparently when Dave says OBSCURE, he means. You know. Obscure. The BEST GAME EVER MADE doesn’t qualify. So I offer up a different title for consumption.

Spy vs. Spy. Quite possibly the best thing ever to spring out of Mad Magazine. The NES version of this game was a confusing, convoluted affair of wandering through an embassy, laying dangerous (and hilarious) traps for your opposite-colored opponent, who was also wandering around the same embassy doing the same. Every room you wandered in was a potential hazard, because not only do you have to be cautious every time you examine any object, but you also have to be clever enough to remember if you loaded that safe with dynamite.

The controls were lousy, the graphics were terrible, the gameplay was confusing to the point of being nonsensical, yet there was a genuine sense of danger and dread playing with a live opponent, of walking into a room and wondering if you were about to get a bucket of water to the head. Which, you know, kills you.

Erich: I’m with Adam. In what world does Little Nemo: The Dream Master count as an NES powerhouse? I have a feeling Dave tacked it onto the end of his list so I wouldn’t talk about it (funny he didn’t add Battletoads). Alright, Mr. Johnson, I’ll bite and pick another game. Hmmm…. Obscure, eh? Well, though I wouldn’t say I liked it, I spent a Godly amount of time one early ’90s summer playing Bible Adventures, an unlicensed Christian title from Wisdom Tree Games.

A little backstory: I spent that summer working at a camp as a babysitter for the Program Director’s 4-year-old son. It wasn’t a glamorous job, and it didn’t pay well, but considering I wasn’t legally allowed to have a job yet, it was pretty good (in fact, I used the money I earned for that couple months’ work—something like $200 total—to buy my NES and a copy of Mega Man 2). Anyway, I had a lot of child-watching hours to fill and not a ton of experience, so I relied heavily on the fact that this kid had a Nintendo. After a few hours playing Super Mario Bros., I’d switch things up and pop in Bible Adventures, one of two other games he had (the other was Black Bass… also obscure, and also lame).

For the uninitiated (read: cool kids), Adventures consists of three short Bible-themed games: a Noah’s Ark game where you have to stun, pick up, and carry animals into the Ark; a David and Goliath platformer; and “Baby Moses” (another carrying game), wherein Miriam tries to save her baby brother from the murderous Pharaoh by toting him to the end of each level. The controls were awful and the games were pale shadows of much better NES titles, but it was the easiest way to keep my young charge entertained. (By the way, you can tell I was a good babysitter because the kid’s parents actually had to tell me that I needed to take him outside to play more instead of sitting him in front of the TV all summer. I guess you get what you pay for.) So, there you go Dave. You wouldn’t let me talk about Little Nemo, so this is what you get. I hope you’re happy.

By Dave Johnson

Tags: NES, Symposium Ad Nauseum

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Symposium Ad Nauseum, Vintage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.