History
This was the first console I got me into gaming. I remember I got this after my parents were separated. My dad sees his way of giving love is by buying expensive stuff. But I was not complaining. I remember that the version that I have was the Famicom version with the top cart slot. I had only one cart which was a 120 games in 1 where most of them were just modded versions of other games but there was one stand out which was Contra. I remember me and my brother can't wait to get back home from school to play 2 player co-op. Good times indeed. Eventually my Famicom system was busted (probably due to dust), and so my dad got me another off-brand "system". It was call the micro genius machine. It is just the NES with a better body and controllers. I think I had that console until I was around 10 where after that I stop playing with games for a while a mostly played PC games. But I will never forget the console that started it all
Games
The NES has wide array of library with a multitude of genre to choose form. The problem is I think the developers are idea can't translate well to the NES due to its hardware limitation.
The Good
Some of the games does stand the test of time. Of course Mario being one of it. The key to any good game is balancing the difficulty and the speed of the game. Great games are tend to be faster than crappy games. They have a clear objective and usually the pixels are not all over the place. A good example of this is Gi JOE. They game is clearly fun and deep. The enemies are challenging but not to the borderline of insane. Games that work for the NES are side scrolling action platformers, top down shooters (which I get it during that time can't work, I myself find that genre boring). Other than that is quite tough.
The Bad
Some of the games have slow framerate which makes it hard to enjoy. While others have the ability to put you in a situation where you need to time precise movements to jump and dodge attacks. The game play is fun but it is extremely taxing on a player with only 2 lives. Besides that there are a vast majority of shooting clones. From top down to side scrolling, on the ground, the air and in space. I think that is an easy design choice of avoiding bullets.
The Ugly
Some games are clearly on meant to be on the NES. Among them are 3D adventure games. Due to the limited number of colours and pixels that can be displayed. You need to have a lot of patience to play a game that requires a lot of reading. I myself did not fancy any text based RPG. Games with one hit kills, and there are a lot of them. I can imagine way back in the past where a kid just a got a cool game only the end up dying in the first 2 minutes. Dying again and again.. And again. Which makes me wonder, do the developers who develop the game at least test their own product. I do understand that NES games are surprisingly short. So up ramping up the difficulty, it will make the play factor a little longer. Racing games also doesn't fare well. They are trying to do a 3D approach but, the NES doesn't have MODE 7 graphics so there is no depth in the tracks. Which makes racing a little more challenging.
Why?
Why most of the games comes with a timer?
Why is the difficulty ramp up to extreme?
Why most of the games involve you going from left to right?
Conclusion
There were 787 games on the NES that I've played but only 30 still stands the test of time. Which is not bad considering there were a lot of crappy games than good ones. Consider this is my last foray into the 8-bit machine. Thank you for everything and making me to who I am as a gamer today. Next on the list... Master System
Master System
Gameboy
Genesis
Neo Geo
Game Gear
SNES
No comments:
Post a Comment