The Legend of Zelda

The scope of this game at its release was unlike anything the video game industry had seen. The concept of an epic adventure that revolved around puzzle and problem solving in conjunction with engaging combat was a relatively novel idea at the time, and made The Legend of Zelda a pretty ambitious title. The game was certainly quite large, and packed a good deal of content into the cartridge, but how much fun could an elf running around in a Robin Hood costume really be?

The game cartridge contained an internal battery that allowed saving. While we take that concept for granted now, the ability to save (much less to have multiple save files on one cartridge) was a pretty nifty feature at the time. And with a game as challenging as this one, it was definitely a blessing.

The game's plot is pretty straightforward: in the kingdom of Hyrule, a dark wizard named Ganon has kidnapped Princess Zelda in an effort to gain the relic she possessed known as the Triforce. There were three such Triforces, one of which Ganon already owned. The second was shattered into eight pieces and hidden by Princess Zelda, buried within dungeons across the land, under guard by monsters. The third? Well...we don't talk about him. You are Link, a young boy tasked with saving the princess and defeating Ganon.

Of course, this would provide the first piece of confusion in the game: it's called The Legend of Zelda, but Zelda is just this kidnapped damsel? You mean your character is someone altogether different? And doesn't that plot (save the kidnapped princess) sound almost identical to Mario, just with different names?

Thankfully, you'll soon find that the similarities with Mario stop at the basic plot outline. The Legend of Zelda plays from an overhead perspective, and from the start puts you in the middle of this giant kingdom with nothing to your name but a tiny shield and no indication of where to go or what to do. But Hyrule can be unforgiving, and it's dangerous to go alone, so you should first find some sort of weapon.

From there on it's basically a search for the dungeons holding the shards of the Triforce, without which you can't hope to defeat Ganon. And dungeoneering comprises the bulk of the gameplay and challenge. While you can go anywhere at any time, the dungeons are labeled numerically to give you an idea of the recommended order and challenge of them. Each dungeon has a map you can find, which is inordinately helpful, as well as a compass showing you where the Triforce piece is hidden. Yet inside the complex are all manners of monsters, from animated skeletons to bats to the bouncing rabbit heads you see above.

But over and above the combat with monsters, the emphasis in the game is placed on puzzles. The old man at right is a regular sight in the game, giving you cryptic clues as to what to do next or where to go to find helpful items. Of course, he's also completely senile, which might cause you to attack him in frustration. But that's really a bad idea. The flames at his sides will start shooting crap at you and you'll get destroyed pretty quick. The Legend of Zelda subtly is telling children to respect their elders, and you have to give it some credit for that.

The puzzles themselves range from the simple to the completely head scratching. You'll often find yourself just wandering around the world looking for the next thing to do. You might have completed dungeon 6, and as you walk realize you have no earthly idea where to find dungeon 7. So you go around looking for any sort of clue, and even when you think you're on the right track, you still might have to try everything you can think of to make it all work. Your opinion of the game will undoubtedly be shaped by your patience for this sort of thing. If you like a mental challenge, you'll love this. But if you want to just play through a game without doing a lot of thinking, you will hate this game with a passion. Or you'll use a walkthrough. Cheater.

The flip side is that this gives you a huge sense of reward when you solve a problem. I'm not sure I've ever felt better about myself for merely setting foot in the entrance door of a dungeon as I have in this game, because sometimes finding the dungeon takes longer than completing it! And a great feature of the game is the inventory, which will steadily expand as you play. Every dungeon has at least one inventory item you can add to your possession. So while you start with just a shield (and a dinky wooden sword when you find it), eventually you're throwing boomerangs, shooting silver arrows, riding rafts, exploding bombs, and...handing out...giant hocks of ham.....ok, so it doesn't all make sense, but it's still pretty entertaining.

There's pretty good variety in the environments of the overworld (that is, anything not a dungeon) as well. The game starts you off in a relatively mountainous and rocky region, but you'll find forests, lakes, deserts, and so forth as you traverse the world. One set of woods infamously trapped the player. You could exit in a certain direction at any time, but attempting to get to the other side would place you back on the same screen. People thought they had glitched cartridges, and the only way you find out how to get through the place was by talking to someone on the other side of the woods. That's just cruel.

And then there's the enormous graveyard, which comprises six or seven screens. Usually there's a ghost floating around each screen, which you can't kill with any standard weaponry, because it's a ghost. So you're content to leave them all alone, but then some hag tantalizes you with the knowledge that there is someone hiding in the graveyard who will give you something. So you walk around trying to move the gravestones to find hidden passages, as any sane, greedy grave robber might do. And the ghosts get pissed. Every time you touch a tombstone a new ghost appears and it's not long before you are having the poop haunted out of you by legions of the undead. And then you flee to the adjacent screen where there are a bunch of warrior statues camped out, and accidentally bump one, and oh god, now it's coming to life and trying to kill me with its spear, get it off get it off!

If you manage to survive the dangers of the world and figure out how to even GET to Ganon's hideout, you're rewarded with the hugest and most difficult dungeon yet. It's even shaped like a skull, which we all know is the universal sign for "You're about to get owned." When you finally find Ganon, who is basically an overgrown swine thing, you have to fight him while he's invisible. That's fair, right?

Beating Ganon saves the princess, who then sends you on a harder quest, just like some other ungrateful prude we remember from some other game. The second quest in The Legend of Zelda is actually more fleshed out though, and is really, really tough. They even change some of the puzzles and item/person locations just to keep the challenge escalated. All totaled, this game is definitely not bad, but definitely not great. It lays the groundwork for an immensely successful formula while never really mastering its implementation. This game is better as the starting point to a wonderful series of games than it is as a game in its own right, but merits a playthrough from any serious gamer regardless.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Street Fighter

When this title came out, Capcom had released several games, but nothing that drove their popularity or success through the roof. Mega Man was still a few months away, and the folks at the company thought they'd try their hand at fighting games. Fighting games were a primitive thing, with terrible games like Urban Champion on the market. From that perspective, the bar wasn't too high for Street Fighter, and Capcom thought "Why not? We can make a better game than all that."

With that said, I'm going to shock a lot of you here: Street Fighter is one of the worst games I can remember playing. It's better than Urban Champion, for sure, but Street Fighter is just a nightmare to play. I want to blame the 1987 technology, but that's not fair when you look at the vast array of good games coming out in that time period. That schmuck you see above is Ryu. Yes, the Ryu. That's taken from one of the game's bonus levels, in which you have to chop through a cinder block, or kick wooden boards for extra points. But the guy is clearly a tool, as are the nameless sycophants cheering him on.

And throughout the entire game, he is the only fighter you have the ability to control. You'll "fight" a wide range of different people throughout the game, and some of them seem like they would be marginally less painful to play as, but alas, you are stuck with Ryu.

Now let's talk about the multiplayer component of the game before we go any further. That portion of the game is significant because it involves the only point at which you can control anyone other than Ryu. While Player 1 is still stuck with him, Player 2 gets control of a guy named Ken, who is blonde and clothed in red, but otherwise identical in every single way to Ryu. Same moves, same style, same control, everything. And Ken exists only in the multiplayer portion; he appears nowhere in the single player game. The reason for this is unexplained.

That said, the single player game is absolutely atrocious. You begin by picking a country out of the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, or China. There are two fighters in each country, and your choice of where to start only determines which ones you will fight first. You'll fight them all eventually though, as a little map screen shows you traveling from point to point, so the whole choice is relatively meaningless.

The other fighters are usually just amalgamations of stereotypes condensed into single beings. You get a Chinese farmer type dude, the British punk (keeping in mind this was on the heels of the British punk movement), Japan has a ninja...you get the idea. The other Brit is this dude, named Eagle, who looks like he belongs less in Street Fighter and more in a rousing game of Clue.

The text on that screen is notable too, because that's a pretty frequent occurrence in the game. Anytime you win or lose a match, you get somebody's mug with a wall of text underneath it. In itself that's no biggie, but the game sees fit to attempt to speak the text as well. It's got a voice modulator with horrible, horrible sound quality, and they got a Japanese guy to speak the stuff so it has an overly thick accent too. It's barely decipherable but really gritty and might as well be fingernails on a chalkboard. Not to mention that the continue screen displays a countdown clock on some sort of homemade bomb. That's pleasant.

The worst part of the game though is the fighting. Which is obviously pretty unacceptable when working within the format of a fighting game. There are six attack buttons, though many times it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish any difference in their functions. Every move, and I do mean every move, including jumping, happens on a severe delay. You'll be mortified the first time you press the punch button and see the arm fly out a full second later.

And though you see a special move (the hadouken, which at this point was called "ball fire" or something ridiculous) being performed above, it's really more luck than anything to pull one off. They're supposedly controlled as you would expect, with the quarter-circle motions on the joystick and whatnot, but 80% of the time they just don't work. The input for them has to be incredibly fast, which is ironic in a game that runs so incredibly slowly. And often you'll do a dragon punch when trying to shoot a hadouken, or vice versa, because you're spamming the command so much just hoping for anything to work.

Not that it matters too much anyway, because the fights themselves are absurd. You can button mash the first full six or seven matches and never take a hit. The AI is just terrible, and it's obvious that the computer can't even handle the lag of this game. And if you do somehow manage to land a special move, you'll take away half the opponent's life, and that's not an exaggeration.

Then, suddenly, you'll reach a match that you just can't seem to win. The enemy AI is no better - the game makes matches progressively harder by making the computer do more damage to you. By Sagat at the end (above), you die in three hits. Any. Three. Hits. Less if you get hit by one of his special moves. It's one of the furthest things from "fun" I can imagine. If you want to make the difficulty that obscene by the end, why not gradually build there? I didn't even think it was possible to lose a single round until I was getting annihilated repeatedly.

Well, I persevered so you wouldn't have to. The last two fights take place in Thailand, where both fighters (Adon and Sagat) fight in Muay Thai. Surprised? No? Because you're used to the stereotypes by now. And when you finally win, a battered Sagat tells you that you're now "king of the hill." Only he tells you through that horrible voice modulation crap. Then the credits roll, and they're all in broken English. They even misspell some of the names of their own programming and design team. I know, because I looked it up. Again, so you wouldn't have to.

So do me a favor, and never, ever play Street Fighter. It's a painful experience, only earning what points I gave it for the fact that you'll get a few chuckles out of how bad it is. It's the sort of game that in no way merits a sequel of any sort, and had I been aware of it at the time, I'm sure I would have cursed Capcom when they announced they were making a Street Fighter II. After all, with a series foundation this utterly poor, surely the sequel must be pure crap as well, right?

Bottom Line: 3/20

Wolfenstein 3-D

In the early 1990s, a small team of game developers found themselves faced with a conundrum. They had developed a method of displaying environments such that the player appeared to be in a fully three dimensional area, seeing things from a first-person perspective. And they wanted the player to be able to go around shooting people. Their dilemma was this: How can we make a game that revolves around realistically shooting people dead while not offending the world?

The answer? Make the people you are shooting Nazi soldiers, and the player an American Jewish prisoner of war. Who could complain? The result was Wolfenstein 3-D, a game banned in Germany not because they were offended by its bloody content, but because they were embarrassed by the concept of a Nazi prison complete with swastika banners and portraits of Hitler. Fantastic.

The game is divided into six episodes of ten levels each, though one out of each ten is an optional bonus stage. When the game opens, you are inside your prison cell in presumably the basement of Castle Wolfenstein, having just wrested a knife from the guard and killed him with it. You then take his pistol as well, and begin your escape up the floors of the castle to daylight.

You'll find quickly that the Nazis are a sloppy bunch of people, who tend to leave things strewn about in any old place. Baskets of dog treats, tv dinners, first aid kits, pistol clips, hoards of treasure...you name it. There seems to be zero accountability within the Nazi ranks for cleanliness concerns. Conveniently, the food and ammunition happen to help you out on your quest to escape. So much for German efficiency.

The guards themselves generally consist of vicious attack dogs, run-of-the-mill infantry, SS officers, and military officers. They're all over the place, really. The castle has hundreds of guards, and as far as I can tell, you are the only prisoner. What are they all doing with their time?

The game has four weapons - the aforementioned knife and pistol, machine guns that SS officers carry, and a powerful chaingun. Each bigger gun is a direct upgrade to the one before it, but the knife actually retains some usefulness throughout; if you incessantly stab at an enemy, they will be too busy wincing to shoot at you. And then they'll die. It's barbarous, yes, but guess what? They're Nazis. See how well that works?

After nine or ten floors of murdering and pillaging, only one enemy stands in your way. And he just happens to be 8 feet tall, 600 pounds, and able to wield a massive chaingun in each hand. But killing him yields your freedom, and it's not long before the Allies send you on a new mission to go eliminate a Nazi-engineered plague.

The evil genius behind the plague is this dude, Doctor von Badguy or something. He's holed himself up in another big fortress where he infects people with his zombie plague and manufactures enormous throwing syringes filled with poisonous doom. But mainly infects people with his zombie plague.

The thinking must have been that if the Nazi army could be bolstered by unstoppable zombie legions, the Allies would be forced to surrender. This was, of course, a terrible plan. One should never try to engineer the zombie apocalypse. It's inevitable enough as is without giving it a little nudge, you know?

So you naturally have to fight through a bunch of these Nazombies on your way to kill the schmuck. They're actually pretty frightening. All the living enemies make some sort of noise when they become aware of your presence. I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights thinking I heard someone shout "SPIEN!" before shooting me. Even the dogs bark, at least. But these guys are silent killers. Killers with guns. Coming out of their chests. Which are fired by raising their arms in alternation. With quite a bit of speed and enthusiasm. It's not pleasant, and so Doctor von Badguy must perish.

Finally, after completing that mission, you are sent to assassinate Adolf Hitler himself. Again, he is hiding in a fortress, so you have to navigate to the top floor. Naturally it's the most heavily guarded one yet, but the really strange part is when you get to the top.

You'll find the standard guards and such, but you will also see Hitler in a black cult robe, literally floating around the area. His chest will spontaneously generate balls of fire that shoot at you. Huh? You kill him, which doesn't take long, and the robe falls empty to the ground all Obi-Wan Kenobi style, and you hear this echoing laugh throughout the halls. Since when was Adolf Hitler a voodoo priest? You encounter this several more times, occasionally even seeing two of them at once. What is going on?

It's therefore a bit of a relief when you finally get to the large room containing the madman himself. Although it's pretty unhelpful of him to be riding around in a large suit of battle armor. And even when the armor is destroyed, he jumps out with two chainguns that were evidently in his hands the entire time. How were you operating that suit again?

But it's worth it to finally lay that last bullet into him. The game even hilariously gives you a "Kill Cam" and shows you the grisly death on instant replay, complete with Hitler wistfully saying "Auf Wiedersehen." Wonderful.

All that said, the game actually continues with three prequel episodes which are harder, but extremely anticlimactic. They don't offer anything new in terms of gameplay from the previous ones either, which is a shortcoming and makes the game feel like it drags on a bit. The game is enjoyable, but can get tedious quickly. Hunting around for keys is a pain, and the level variety leaves something to be desired. It's definitely worth playing through the first three episodes however, and for those this game gets a positive score overall.

Bottom Line: 13/20

Mega Man

Capcom's blue bomber burst onto the scene in 1987. His name (and therefore the name of the game) was and is actually Rockman in Japan, but due to copyright issues in North America, he became known as Mega Man. Don't let the completely misleading box art fool you. This game doesn't consist of wannabe Tron characters riding around with guns on invisible horses and blowing up palm trees. Instead, it consists mainly of trying to not die.

The first thing you see after the title screen is the stage select, and it definitely makes you a little wary. I'm all for keeping it simple, but this singular screen tells you that the game will revolve around defeating six robots, each of which being just a different gimmick. Thanks to the old Mega Man cartoon, enemies like Cutman and Gutsman have grown on us a little, but it feels more on the lame side here.

The good news about it is that the game is fun to play anyway, albeit a bit frustrating at certain points of stages. The gist of the story is that Mega Man is the first cyborg, or android, or whatever semi-human robotic term you want to apply to him. He was made in the actual year 20xx by the beneficent Dr. Light to help the world in peaceful ways, but mean old Dr. Wily (Dr. Light's rival) started making robots to conquer the planet. Dr. Light installed a cannon on one of Mega Man's arms, and sent him off to save the world.

This creates a gameplay environment characterized by jumping and shooting your arm cannon, called the Mega Buster. Each stage is littered with smaller robots designed by Dr. Wily to aid in his conquest, as well as various hazards. Among the hazards, two will instantly kill you. The first is the ubiquitous bottomless pit. The second, of course, is spikes. Now I'm not sure how someone with the intelligence and capability to create an android from scratch fails to solve the problem of "exploding upon any contact with a stationary pointed object," but there you have it. It makes me wonder - if Dr. Wily was so sincere in not wanting to be stopped, why not surround his entire fortress with miles of spikes? He'd be invincible. But I digress.

A nice addition is the fact that when Mega Man defeats a Robot Master, he is able to take that robot's power and use it at the cost of some special energy (refills of which are available throughout the game as item pickups). And every boss is weak to the weapon of a different boss, meaning if you find the proper weakness, you really take advantage and fight the boss in a different way. It's a clever mechanic and a hallmark of the whole series.

The stages each have a distinct feel to them, which is a nice touch. Although some of this plays on the obvious, such as having lightning shooting around on Elecman's stage, many times simple changes of scenery can go a long way to prevent the game from feeling tedious or monotonous. The game really climaxes in the visual department with what you see above. There's not really any good reason for anything that is going on in that picture to be happening. It all just sort of happens simultaneously and without explanation. And it's great.

Now most of the game's content, while often cliched, was at least Capcom's own creation in some way. But then you notice this guy flying around and everything breaks down.






<--






What the hell is that! Who do they think they're fooling, honestly? I don't care that you can shoot them, or that they don't die by jumping on them, or that they explode instead of just plowing through you. That is clearly a Bullet Bill. At least take the face and teeth off, you know? When I saw this I was instantly on the lookout for other Mario standards - Goombas, Koopas, all of it. I'm thankful to say nothing else stood out to me, but I wouldn't be surprised if a number of the other enemies were ripped from different, non-Mario games. Horrible.

And then of course, when you finally get to the heretofore unseen Dr. Wily, you realize that this entire time you've actually been trying to murder Albert Einstein. The guy was apparently the greatest scientific genius of the twenty-first century as well as the twentieth. Greedy snob. He also rides around in a flying saucer. So if this game taught me anything, it is that Albert Einstein was responsible not only for nuclear weaponry, but also for UFO sightings, conspiracy theories, and the eventual robot takeover of Earth. What an ass. And when you finally beat him, he just sits there crying like a little girl. And you let him go. Stupid. I guess we'll see you in Mega Man II, jerk.

Then Mega Man starts running across the screen while the credits roll, as the background scenery slowly changes from a beautiful sunset to downtown Metropolis, and he sort of spontaneously sheds all his armor to star in random NES beat-em-up games. Huh?


All in all, the game is decent. The basic mechanics work well enough, the boss weakness system is good, and the levels are tough without being stupidly hard. But there are some issues hampering the game down. For one thing, movement isn't as tight as it should be. Mega Man always slides a little, as though he were on ice. Which naturally means the ice level itself is a nightmare to play. Some of the stages and bosses are far easier than others as well, which the game basically admits by assigning various scores to each stage for its defeat. Mega Man is a game with promise that falls short a little, while never being bad.

Bottom Line: 12/20

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

(This review is dedicated to Michael Jackson, who departed us far too soon.)

Most people don't believe me when I first tell them that this game actually exists. Many are willing to concede that there might possibly be a video game based on Michael Jackson, but insist that I am lying when I begin to describe the game in detail. My retort is simple and oft-repeated. You just can't make this up.

Moonwalker is based on the movie of the same name, with the loose plot being that the villain, Mr. Big (played in the film by Joe Pesci), has been kidnapping children. Therefore, Michael Jackson has two major tasks to complete in this game.

1) Save all the little children.
2) Kill Joe Pesci.

The game itself is a beat-em-up from an isometric perspective. Most games like this are mere sidescrollers, but Michael Jackson lived in three dimensions. Each stage features a midi synth version of a Michael Jackson tune as background music, which is fantastic.

This game features only two buttons. They are labeled "Shot" and "Dance." Pressing Shot causes Michael to place one hand behind his head and the other extended forward, which unleashes a blue energy shock. Holding the Shot button down causes him to place both hands overhead to charge up a blast. All movement during this charging period consists of moonwalking. Releasing the button shoots a powerful blast with extended range. Using Shot in close quarters makes Michael do a spin move, which oddly enough is inordinately strong.

The Dance button, on the other hand, requires dance power to use. You start with one dance power per life, and can occasionally get bonus dance powers. Using Dance sends a spotlight down on Michael, changes the music, and causes every enemy (even dogs) on screen to dance with him in tandem. After all, when Michael Jackson starts dancing, who can resist joining in with perfect synchronization? At the conclusion of the dance, everything on screen spontaneously explodes. It's like looking in the face of God - one cannot dance with Michael Jackson and expect to survive the experience.

There are five stages in the game. Throughout each stage you will find children huddled in corners and the like crying "Michael! Michael!" Touching them (on the shoulder) effectively rescues them, for which they will thank you. Sometimes they will give you health or bonus dance power. Michael has to save every child to advance to the boss of the stage, but only the last four stages have boss encounters.

After defeating the boss, the children you saved during the level excitedly run toward Michael to celebrate their liberation. And then Michael celebrates with them, as you see above....well, I'm sure it's totally innocent. He's just dancing and they want hugs. He saved their lives, after all. The next level will then begin with a quick comic book style intro, the usual Jackson yelp, and a dance move.

On the subject of stages, I do have a bone to pick. First off, the game itself is pretty short. I suppose that saves money in an arcade, but another stage or two wouldn't hurt anyone. Secondly, stage 1 is called "Cavern" and stage 5 is called "Evil Fortress," but they are clearly the exact same level. The only difference is that the Cavern is over within a minute of starting it and has no boss. I guess it was supposed to be a training stage or something. They even have the same background song, "Bad."

And speaking of background songs, there is a graveyard level complete with zombies, and yet "Thriller" is nowhere to be found. The exclusion is understandable when you look at the fact that every song appearing in the game was written entirely by Michael Jackson, and Jackson did not do any writing on "Thriller." Even still, the feel is just not what it could be.

And you know, zombies are probably some of the most "normal" enemies in this game. As you play you will be confronted by: Mobsters, Laser-wielding shock troopers, shirtless crack addicts with knives, dog handlers with stun batons, armor plated dogs, robotic statues, laser turrets, zombies, guys rolling around in tires, miniature steamrollers with lasers, renegade vacuum cleaners, buzzsaw launchers, flamethrowing sewer lids, drone hovercraft, tear gas grenades, and finally, small and giant versions of frog-hopping piston machines. These last are some of the most difficult to defeat; partly because they take a lot of damage, and partly because you really don't want to touch them.

As bizarre as all this has been, I haven't even gotten to the strangest part yet. Toward the end of every level you will encounter a chimpanzee running around in overalls. Why the chimpanzee is there, how it is able to survive with all of the above, and why it is dressed are all unexplained questions. All Michael cares about is the fact that touching this chimpanzee turns him into Mecha Jackson.

In this form the Shot button now shoots lasers out of Michael's fists. Holding the button down charges his missiles. When released, Michael fires missiles out of his abdomen at whatever unfortunate soul is in front of him. The Dance button causes Michael to temporarily revert to human form (so he can do more dance moves than just the robot, presumably), explode everything on screen as usual, and transform back into the cyborg version of himself. It is in this form that Michael fights every boss battle.

The bosses start out pretty reasonably, as far as this game is concerned. The first is a pair of cannons on wheels, with protective shields. It's weird looking but not totally strange in concept, I guess. The second boss is Joe Pesci in a hovering machine surrounded by little laser pods, all of which can be killed individually. When Pesci's vehicle itself takes enough damage, he flies away, ending the stage.

It's the last two boss fights that really get you scratching your head. In the graveyard level Joe Pesci has somehow commandeered or created a machine that spawns ghosts out of three separate tubes. The entire fight he's shouting what sounds like "BOOM! Move it!" but I can't really be sure. Robo-Michael Jackson has to destroy each tube individually while also lasering the ghosts that attack him. When the machine explodes, the entire catwalk Joe Pesci is standing on levitates with jet engines or something, and flies away. What just happened?

And the final boss fight takes place atop the Evil Fortress, with Joe Pesci in some sort of spiderlike contraption. As it walks around smoke and sparks come through the floor at you. I don't really know what they're supposed to be. So you shoot and dance your way to its destruction, and you're treated to a screen of Mr. Big screaming like a girl whilst burning to death. Meanwhile his fortress is exploding. Michael, unable to run out of the fortress in time to escape the explosion, decides to do what any rational person would do in such a situation. He transforms into a jet and flies away. I repeat: Michael Jackson turns himself into a jet.

Then we get the epilogue which consists of a textual summary telling us that the children are safe and Joe Pesci is dead, but what of Michael? Well, the children seem to say he'll be back someday to...and that's it. It cuts off there. He'll be back someday to what?! Now, maybe the machine I was playing it on was glitched, maybe I've never seen what the ending was supposed to say, but that's a rotten cliffhanger. Then we get shots of Jackson's feet dancing and stuff, and a high score screen with him sweating a lot. It's all pretty ridiculous, and it really makes you wonder who in the world could come up with this thing.







...Oh.






Bottom Line: 13/20

Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros. is perhaps the single most influential and important game ever made. It revolutionized the industry and possibly even prevented the death of the video game as a form of media. It's seen countless sequels and spinoffs, and even a (terrible) Hollywood feature film. Yet for all this hooplah and mystic reverence surrounding the game, there's still one vital question. Is it actually good?

The first thing you'll notice about this game is the lack of a title screen. It jumps straight into the select menu for a one or two player game. That tells you right off the bat that this game is all about getting you into the hardcore action early.

The story is simple enough: you are Mario, a plumber from somewhere not here, and the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom has been kidnapped by a giant evil turtle bent on forcing her to marry him. All previous attempts to rescue her by her servants have resulted in their also being captured, so it is up to you to go save her from, presumably, interspecies rape.

The Mushroom Kingdom is, with a few exceptions consisting of overgrowths of enormous mushroom towers, a total wasteland. The entire ground has been paved over by a nasty reddish-brown brick. Any sight of plants that aren't coming out of pipes trying to devour you are distant. And the landscape is dotted with inexplicably floating bricks and golden boxes with question marks on them.

The contents of these boxes are puzzling to say the least. Inside you will find gold coins, which are the standard Mushroomian currency (and collecting 100 of which give you an extra life without ever visiting a banker), smaller, edible mushrooms, sentient stars that make you completely invincible to everything but gravity, and glowing flowers that, when touched, ignite Mario's snot into flaming bouncing balls of doom.

The mushrooms themselves can either make Mario double in size or give him an extra life, depending on their color. Personally I have never eaten a mushroom that enables me to either become giant or die and resurrect automatically. If anyone knows where I can find either of these morsels, please let me know.

In any case, each level consists of running from one little castle or outpost to the next one, lowering the enemy Koopas' flag, raising a new flag that is a little reminiscent to the flag of Vietnam, killing some of God's heavenly host, and then repeating on the next stage.

Along the way are an assortment of opposing creatures that have no business existing. Goombas are little brown mushrooms with feet, Koopa Troopas are happy looking turtles bent on killing you and everything you hold dear, Lakitus are owls (?) riding around on clouds dropping spiked stuff on your head, and of course there are the Hammer Bros. who spontaneously generate hammers and throw them non-stop without eating, sleeping, or even using the bathroom.

All this is great and exciting, but then you come to a place where your enthusiasm dies with your soul and you begin to wish this game had some sort of warp zone: I am speaking, of course, about the dreaded water levels.

In hindsight, if they knew how this game was going to change the face of it all and would become a template for so many other games, I like to think the good people at Nintendo would have said "You know what, let's scrap the water stages." It's not so much that the water levels in Super Mario Bros. are bad; it's that invariably when you get to the obligatory water level in any video game, you groan. You know you do. We all hate them, yet they keep coming. And it all starts here.

The upside is that apparently all those years as a plumber dealing directly with the bodily waste of portly Italian men like himself taught Mario how to survive without breathing. Those air bubbles? From the squids. Squids have to breathe. Mario doesn't. It also helps that his fiery mucus is incapable of being extinguished even on the ocean floor. And that cash money is floating around free for the taking.

The game starts out easily enough, though by the eighth and final world, the difficulty has ramped up quite a bit. As you can see at right, the enemies become more populous and cannons start firing at your face and it's all just quite the mess. There are usually safe areas to stand, but even then, good luck. The game is a challenge for sure, though it becomes far easier with practice and is never unreasonably hard by any degree.

Probably the best thing about the game is its control. It plays very tightly and responds about as well as you could hope and expect it to. Complaints about hit detection and the like are minimal, and mid-jump maneuverability was a big plus. So at least when you're fighting your way through 32 levels of acid trip, you'll have some command over it.

Of course, after every castle and supposed fight with Bowser, the King Koopa, you only find a little mushroom man telling you that the Princess is in another castle. By the time you get to the real Bowser, he's spitting fire and throwing hammers like it's his job. All you have to do is run by him to win, but that can be easier said than done. Unless, that is, you're giant Mario. Then you can just run into and through him. You'll shrink, but he'll die. Hey, it works.

And when you finally do, you get treated to the screen above. A butt-ugly redhead giving you a cursory thank you while sending you off on some other errand. That errand, if you follow her directions to find out, ends up being to save her captured ass all over again, with harder enemies. No thanks wench. Call me when you eventually get hot. We both know you will.

Bottom Line: 14/20