Nostalgia November: The NES
by Steve “Konami Code” Monnich, Co-Founder and Gyromite Champion originally posted November, 2017 on rockdeeprogueradio.com
Ah, November again! We here at GGR love to go back into the depths of our boring childhoods and pluck out pop culture gems that meant something to us. It makes us feel good, OKAY! Stop...stop looking at me like that. With your beady little judgemental eyes. I know where you live you little...ok sorry, got a little worked up there. Anyway...here are some 8 bit video games I played and liked. Enjoy!
6. Mission: Impossible
Good morning Reader. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to not throw your NES controller through your parents stereo cabinet glass panel in a fit of video game rage over the difficulty of this game. If you or any of your fellow players are caught or killed, well...you probably aren’t playing Nintendo correctly. Caught at what? Killed?! HOW!?!?
Hot damn did this game live up to the title! Based on the late 80’s/ early 90’s television series, this third person shooter was six levels of torture. You play as either Max, Grant or Nicholas, who are three of the IMF’s top agents. The game has a very interesting bird’s eye, top down perspective of the agent you control, which sort of makes them look like oblong blobs with blades for limbs. However, that’s easily the raddest sort of secret agent, so it gets a pass.
The true insanity of this game is just figuring out where to go or what to do. They really captured the essence of being a force of specialists called into action to infiltrate a rogue group of terrorists. Bad guys are everywhere, even in places you don’t need to go. And there are so many places you don’t need to go! It’s like the Reddit of NES games.
There are security systems and passkeys and booby traps (heh heh heh). One wrong move and you just bought a first class ticket to deadsville. Once you lose them all, its game over. No lives. No continues. Woof.
This game was hard for the first two levels. But then you get to level three: The Syrinx Temples of East Berlin. Did someone say spy robots, blade wielding suits of armor, bullet bending magnets and a boss who’s floor collapses as you stand on it, making it like a time limit but harder. I have beaten every Mega Man game, Castlevania and 2 of the Ninja Gaiden series. This level may be harder than any of those.
Before the internet was a thing used by more than ultra nerds and government scientists, you couldn’t just look up codes and cheats. So my Dad, being an electrical engineer, wrote a code on his computer to run the game’s programing to attempt every single combination of characters to be entered in as cheat codes. My Dad, as you can tell, is freakin’ awesome as heck! It’s one of those things that nowadays (ugh I just said nowadays, I’m so old..) would be a waste of time, but back then was just something only a wizard could do. A six year old boy goes to bed, mad at the world that it would allow such a cruel and unforgiving game to exist, and then he wakes up to all the codes. Just...here are the codes dude. I’ll never forget that. That’s real nostalgia there. I just got a little teary eyed...OK next game on the list!
5. Duck Tales
I am just gonna come out and say it, Capcom rules. They make so many good games that stand the test of time (more than one of which make this list. Hint hint). This little gem based on a Dinsey show wouldn’t seem like the kind of game a man in his thirties should be talking about, but it’s just so fun to play! The music is rocking, the gameplay is smooth and it provides the perfect level of challenge.
Haven’t you ever wondered, “Hey, what would it be like to be Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank, but a duck, who has a fancy rich guy cane that can also be a pogo stick-golf club hybrid used to smash rocks or throttle treasure chests into mummies?” Well my beautiful and cherished reader, wonder no more! You in no way need to be familiar with the vast and historied lore of the Duck Tales franchise to try this game out.
Taking Scrooge McDuck on a globetrotting adventure from exotic locales ranging from The Amazon to Transylvania, you attempt to collect a cavalcade of fantastic treasures. But who cares about that, because one of the levels is on the freakin’ moon! That has alien robot ducks! That you pogo-stomp with your murder cane! No, I didn’t slip in the bathroom and brain myself on the edge of the shower then run over to my laptop and type random concussed non-sense. That’s actually part of the game that was developed and tested by humans. Mega badass humans.
no spacesuit, no helmet...Scrooge McDuck is cyborg!
This one found its way into the nostalgia category because I have fond memories of my mother, brother and I taking turns playing through this game after school, all of those play-throughs where we attempted to find the hidden secrets and power ups. I’m sure if you look back, it may not be Duck Tales, but I am certain there is a game that elicits these kinds of memories for you. Maybe it’s a game where you and your friends or family gathered around one brave soul who was on a real heater who has made it deep into the game. Duck Tales was one of those games for me.
4. Chip ‘N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers
I know, I know. Back to back Capcom games based on Disney cartoons from the 90s. At least I think it is...(checks rest of list)...yep yep it is. For those of you who had a childhood filled with emptiness and don’t know what Chip ‘N’ Dale is, first off, I’m sorry. Secondly it’s a show where anthropomorphic rodents solve animal based crimes.
The main draw of this game from a nostalgia perspective is that it was a beautifully fluid two player co-op game. My brother and I would scoop up the controllers, and navigate the seedy underworld led by the ruthless Fat Cat. Even if you weren’t a fan of the cartoon itself, the gameplay is so quick and intuitive it could be based on any franchise and it would hold up. OK not ANY franchise. I mean what kid would want to play like, Citizen Kane the NES game? What would you even do? Run around trying to collect rights to newspaper outfits and picking up toboggans for power-ups?! It would be madness.
Oh...and there's this. CHIP IS INDY AND DALE IS MAGNUM P.I.!!!!!
Anyway, you can play as either Chip or Dale and you traverse the world from a rodent’s eye perspective. Levels come in the form of treetops, casinos, a sewer system and of course the Fat Cat Cat Food Factory. The Rescue Rangers are on this intrepid mission because the nefarious Fat Cat has kidnapped the lady mouse of the gang, Gadget. And as a kid who didn’t have a crush on Gadget. You have to save her!!
3. Mega Man 6
How do you narrow down the Mega Man series to one game? I will grant you that the formula is practically identical in game play for all 6 of the NES versions, however the growing list of new techniques and equipment in each successive game makes them an impressive series. Mega Man started out with just a simple robotic arm that shot bolts of energy. By the time we arrive at Mega Man 6, he can transform his robot dog best friend into either a mech battle suit or a rocket jet pack. Talk about man’s best friend. I have had a few dogs in my life and none of them were able to help launch me into the stratosphere like the Rocketeer. Thanks for nothing, Muffin!
As cool as Mega Man is himself, what ultimately made the series a standout was the unique villains. Each evil robot has a unique element or power, that once defeated, becomes yours! Haven’t you always wanted the ability to control wind or flame or whatever the hell Yamato is?! Well now you can, thanks to Mega Man 6! Like its first 5 predecessors, eight artificial mechanized terrors stand before you. You can elect to defeat them in any order you like, but any idiot knows you start with Plant Man. Its Plant Man for crying out loud, and if you can’t beat him, it would be better for you if you took that cartridge out of your NES and insert a copy of Fisher Price Firehouse Rescue, because you are a tiny little baby person.
I love that Mega Man looks legit concerned there in the middle.
I believe when it comes to nostalgia, what truly elicits that powerful feeling about the past is the strength of the emotion that you felt at the time you are now remembering. That old emotion can really be anything, but in regards to Mega Man, that intense memory comes from the feeling of triumph over difficulty. Anyone who has even made it to Dr. Wily’s castle knows what I am talking about here. I could make a pretty convincing argument that the entire Mega Man series was created by the government as a secret test to measure the level of psychological torture American kids could endure. However, I don’t want our site to get shut down by the fuzz so I’ll keep these confidential documents secure until a later date.
2. Super Mario Bros. 3
Well well well. This entry should be a surprise to literally nobody. The penultimate title on my list could have easily been number one, and I’m sure there are some of you screaming at your screen saying “Mario is only #2?! What is wrong with your brain you turd juggling butt monster?!” And while I will admit that it’s plainly obvious that the Mario franchise and Nintendo are basically the same thing in terms of marketing and the company’s history, this is my list of nostalgia, not a list of games I have meticulously quantified down to the numerically best game. Who’s the turd juggler now, turd juggler?!
And really, what can I say about this game that hasn’t been said before? It is everything you love about the Mario franchise, and the foundation of everything great that would come after it. As fun as the original Super Mario Bros is, and as unique as Mario 2 turned out, neither can truly hold a fire flower to SMB 3. Bowser kids? Power ups that turn you into a frog or hammer brother or whatever the hell a tanooki is? Warp whistle on the warp whistle land?! Sign me up baby! This game is so good, I even forgive it for being in the movie The Wizard.
and there's this combo: the Tanooki suit/riding in the wind up boot. Unstoppable.
Recently, I had the opportunity to play thru the game with my wife on a family vacation. In spite of my best efforts, I was not able to complete the entire game while wearing a Frog suit (and I mean in the game, I myself was not wearing a frog suit while on the couch playing the game). I got jammed up on one of SMB 3’s coolest features...the Airship. Boss levels in video games need to be the right balance of challenging, beatable and fun. The Airships at the end of each world accomplishes this in spades. Leaping between cannon fire, dodging wrench throwing monsters and dancing between jet engine flame throwers makes you feel accomplished when you see that final pipe leading to the Boswer offspring. But stop celebrating you fool! You need to put on your game face because your fighting Roy Koopa and he makes you freeze in place when he hits the ground because he is a super fatso!! LOOK ALIVE LUIGI!!!
1. The Legend of Zelda
Well if it wasn’t Mario, what else could it have been if not Zelda? The game that spawned an empire. This is THE adventure game. It has everything you could possibly want and its open world design lets you control the adventure. Sure, there are places you can’t go or things you can’t do until you find certain magical objects, but the quest is your own. Want to start out by finding a bunch of Heart Containers to make the fight a little easier? Go for it! Feel like slaying a ton of monsters to get those sweet sweet Rupees in order to buy the Blue Ring and up your defense? No reason not to! Got the itch to just start working through the dungeons to get closer to save Princess Zelda? That’s what you’re there for after all! There is just no limit to the ways you can enjoy the land of Hyrule.
Back in the dark ages before people had small computers in their pockets, all the cheats and maps and info on how to beat video games came in only three main methods. You could subscribe to Nintendo Power magazine and hope your game was part of the coverage that month, you could call the Nintendo tip line and rack up your parents credit card bill because that service cost like $8,000 per minute, or lastly you could buy walkthrough manual. That last one was basically the site GameFAQs printed on paper. I remember to this day being a young kid and my dad came home with photocopies of the game manual for the Legend of Zelda. We around the house just called it “the papers”. They became these ancient scrolls that a parent would use to divine where secrets were kept, or the best way to navigate the current dungeon. Despite it being a single player game, nights became a group affair where we as a unit tried to beat Ganon. The person playing the game was just the one controlling Link, but we were all together playing the game. And you better believe we turned that pig demon into a pile of dust and plucked the triforce from his lifeless mass!
Eat it, Ganon!
Well Mr. or Ms. Reader, that brings this list of games to a close. I hope revisiting these old 8-bit gems jogged your emotional memory and reminded you of something from your past that you miss. Maybe it was a game or a movie or a song, but whatever it is I know we want to hear about it. This whole month is being dedicated to the concept of nostalgia, so get involved in the conversation. We have been and will be dropping all kinds of content to help elicit that spirit of the good old days, so please subscribe to our podcast and continue checking the site daily for a heaping helping of childhood fondness.
Oh, and I’m really sorry I called you a turd juggler back there. Things got heated and we both said some things we regret. I won’t let it happen again.
