NES Games Marathon Vol. #1 | Friday Night Arcade

happy halloween this week on friday night arcade i'm going to take a look at some of the scariest games ever released on the nintendo entertainment system first up is friday the 13th released by ljn in 1988. this game mostly follows events from the familiar slasher films of the same name even the box art is scary there's that homicidal axe murdering maniac jason voorhees right on the cover i wasn't allowed to watch these movies as a kid but i knew who he was and it was unnerving seeing him on the cover of an nes game you take control of camp counselors and have to defend the crystal lake campers against jason voorhees whether or not this game is actually good is certainly open for debate but i have to applaud the designers efforts for trying something different the game is definitely unique and i distinctly remember having a certain sense of dread playing it as a rental when i was a little kid most of the game takes place as a side scroller complete with creepy scenery zombies and other random monsters however occasionally an alarm will go off letting you know that jason is attacking children in one of the cabins you have to make a beeline across the map before the timer runs out if the timer runs out jason flat out murders a kid how ominous is that once inside the cabin the game switches perspective and becomes jason voorhees punch out the game certainly isn't perfect but the spooky music and occasional jump scares are worth a look not to mention the cruelest game over screen ever next up is uninvited a haunted house adventure game this is part of the mac venture series of point-and-click adventure games from kimco which started off on mac and pc before being ported over to the nes in 1991 these are some of my favorite games on the original nintendo and i had them all as a kid growing up and uninvited you wake up after a car crash to find that your sister has disappeared you go off searching for in this nearby old mansion and not everything is as it seems these games give you a first person perspective and there's an inventory system as well as a series of commands on the bottom that you can use to interact with the environment and pick up objects death lurks around every corner in the form of zombies hellhounds demons monsters ghosts and more the most famous of which is this creepy scarlet o'hara ghost that the player encounters fairly early in the game hope you have your trusty bottle of no ghost handy and it's not just the imagery some of the descriptions are downright horrifying she turns to face you her face is devoid of any flesh you are frozen with horror as she begins ripping you apart this game also has all sorts of red herrings and traps for example it's tempting to want to pick up every object in case you need it for something later but the overwhelming majority of objects you find do nothing and one object will actually cause you to die if you hold it for too long and i don't want to spoil too much of the story but it's heavily implied at the end when you finally find your sister that she was being possessed by a demon that lives in the house i really can't believe they got away with that [Music] monster party released in 1989 by bandai you're a little kid named mark who sees a falling star on his way home from a baseball game it turns out to be this weird gargoyle creature from another planet named burt bert takes you to his home world to fight off the evil monsters and you both fuse together for some reason certain power ups make you switch back and forth between mark and the monster as you fight off hordes of creeptastic monsters eyeballs fishes with people legs these whatever these things are and the bosses are even weirder killer plants pumpkinheads and this crazy looking medusa monster and then there's this giant spider sorry come to it check out the art direction here too at one point the first stage morphs into this terrifying landscape of horrific faces bloody skulls and these hands coming up from the ground this is the stuff the nightmares are made of even the stage startup screen is soaked in blood i'll never look at gumby the same way again next up chiller released by excited games in 1990. this was an unlicensed nes port of an arcade game they produced in 1986. it's a light gun game where you just shoot people in a house seriously that's the entire game the nes version tries to insert a story about a castle being invaded by ghostly forces but really you're just shooting people and monsters zombies weird monster heads ghosts decapitated heads there's only four rooms and some of them are people just chained up in medieval torture devices you can either shoot the people or shoot the devices to make something gruesome happen with all the gore and violence it's no wonder this game was unlicensed the producers of this game are just mean you can cut this guy's head off feed this guy to an alligator and shoot an innocent dog i don't mind violence in video games but this just seems pointless it's not by any means a good game and i can only recommend checking it out for curiosity's sake and not much else [Music] another horror movie adaption nightmare on elm street released by ljn in 1990. the film follows the movies and you play one of the high schoolers being terrorized by freddy krueger you have to explore elm street looking for freddy's bones in each of the houses and then burn them in the furnace at the high school you fight all sorts of creepy enemies along the way and the game has a unique mechanic in that instead of dying when you lose all of your energy you fall asleep and slip into a nightmarish version of elm street where the enemies get even scarier the day to night transition is actually well done and similar to the day night shift in simon's quest uh-oh freddie's coming freddy is horrendous looking and he takes on multiple forms similar to the movies i really can't believe this came out on an 8-bit system last but certainly not least sweet home was released in 1989 by capcom this game was so scary it was only released in japan although the game did receive a fan translation to english it can actually be purchased as a reproduction cartridge today it's based on a touhou horror film of the same name which also came out the same year the game also inspired several elements of the resident evil franchise that we know today the story revolves around a small film crew exploring an old mansion they enter the mansion in search of several famous paintings that were hidden by the artist that lived there with the intention of making a documentary about recovering the paintings but when the film crew enters the building a terrifying ghost seals the door behind them and threatens to kill them now they have to find a way to escape before the mansion collapses or before the monsters that inhabit the place kill them all it's no wonder this game didn't get a us release it's a pretty terrifying concept compared to the usual kid-friendly nes lineup of the 80s once inside the mansion the game consists of top-down exploration with several jrpg elements you can control all five of the characters individually or team them up in groups no bigger than three this keeps you on your toes because no combination of the characters is overly balanced they all have their own special tools or abilities such as a key a med kit a vacuum cleaner a camera as well as a lighter they each have special uses as you make your way through the mansion along the way you have random monster encounters and they get progressively more horrifying as you go this game also features permadeath typically in an rpg if a character in your party dies they can be revived in some way but in sweet home if one of your characters bites the dust that's it they're dead and you just have to find a way to get through the game without them the whole thing is very foreboding and definitely worth a look if you're into horror games as well as rpgs from that era well that wraps it up for this week i'd love to hear what scary retro games you played as a kid growing up did you play any of the games mentioned here or were there some others that creeped you out when you were growing up let me know in the comments below and be sure to like the video if you enjoyed this you can also subscribe to check out all of my other retro gaming content and you can even pick up a t-shirt to show your support for your favorite d-list youtube channel hey thanks for watching everybody we'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] welcome back to friday night arcade thank you for stopping by and checking out the channel this week on buried treasures i'm taking a look back at the legend of cage for the nintendo entertainment system actually it's pronounced legend of kage this is a port of an arcade game that was released by tato in 1985. the story is completely original here at some point during the edo period a group of mystical villains attacked japan and kidnapped princess kiri you play as kage a heroic ninja who has to you guessed it rescue the princess the game's brief opening cut scene shows kiri in the woods getting kidnapped by ninja gaiden no wonder she got kidnapped she was wandering around in the woods by herself and she appears to be blind then the game begins and it's time to unleash ninja hell okay so the play control is by no means perfect and the graphics are not exactly showing off what the nes can do but hey it was early in the nintendo's life cycle so i can forgive that actually the thing that struck me about this game was the unique play control when you control kage a swings your sword and b throws your projectile weapon an unlimited array of throwing stars that you can fire off in any direction if you're up in the air if you press up on the d-pad kage jumps and jumps and jumps he actually kind of floats in the air all over the place and can climb up trees it's pretty wild and i can't think of too many games that play like this it's similar to ninja gaiden but different in ninja gaiden you have projectiles but they're limited to how much ninja power you get but here they're unlimited and ninja guidance levels go all straight left or straight right but here you can actually climb quite a ways up in the trees it's hard to explain it it's just different you also get power ups although i have such a hard time controlling kage that when he jumps half the time i end up not being able to grab them the awkward jumping does also result in a few cheap deaths so you have to be careful with how you maneuver don't get too wild here if you keep getting the orbs you seem to level up your character you can take a little more damage and shoot faster that's another thing there's no life bar so it's a one hit and dead situation if you grab an orb or have the shadow illusion power up you can take an extra hit but that's it if you kill enough blue ninjas in a row with your sword you can get this little face power up that gives you an extra guy also when the game starts out you're actually already as far to the right as you can go in the level it's weird instead of going right in the first level you go to the left you fight your way through a bunch of ninjas and eventually get all the way to the left and it's just another dead end what the okay so you're actually supposed to keep running around back and forth killing as many ninjas as you can keep killing the red and blue ninjas until the blue monks show up kill three of those guys and then grab the scroll that kills everybody on the screen then eventually you have to fight a red monk who shoots bowser's fireball kill the red monk and then you can break the curse over the forest and move on to the next level there's some more video game crypticness near the end after you enter the castle and free the princess it seems like you make your escape back through the woods however i'm thinking maybe kage needs to go back to ninja school because the princess ends up getting kidnapped again when she's walking right behind you now you fight the final boss which in the nes version has a set of twin monks that look like raiden from mortal kombat at first you can't seem to do any damage to them that's weird but there are these butterflies flying around turns out you have to shoot the butterflies five times and then you can take out the monks and save the princess again the game is pretty short there are only five levels if you can call them that and once you get good at the game you can pretty much get through the whole thing in under 10 minutes and when i say short i mean sure after you make it through the secret tunnel you're supposed to climb the wall to the castle here's the entire level [Music] that's it and that one song just plays on a loop for the whole game also once you save the princess the game starts you back in the forest level but now it's a different season so apparently there's summer fall and winter it looks like they just did a pallet swap though i didn't see any difference in gameplay and wasn't motivated enough to play through the levels again in spite of all that though i still feel like this game is worth a look you could do better but you could do a lot worse it's kind of fun just floating around all over the place cutting up bad guys with your sword and flinging ninja stars in every direction it's just different from your usual platformer if you miss this game growing up and just want to try something off the wall see if you can dig this one up somewhere just don't pay more than a couple bucks for it it also may be worth seeking out the original arcade version if you can find a way to play it there are also versions of this game on the armstrod cpc the commodore 64 zx spectrum and there's some remakes and re-releases on the virtual console there was even a sequel to it at one point well that's all for now i'd be curious to know if any of you played this game did you play it as a kid growing up or did you find out about it recently let me know if you played legend of kage and what you thought about it in the comments below hey thanks for watching everybody we'll see you next time on friday night arcade welcome back to friday night arcade this week i'm taking a look at one of my earliest adventure gaming memories shadowgate for the nintendo entertainment system in the late 80s icom simulations developed a series of macintosh adventure games commonly referred to as the mcventure series they featured a simple menu-based point-and-click interface and placed the player in a series of adventures with puzzles to solve and enemies to defeat along the way the original computer series consisted of deja vu the uninvited shadowgate and deja vu ii lost in las vegas each released about a year apart from 1985 to 1988 with the exception of the deja vu sequel each of these games were ported to the nintendo entertainment system however they were released out of order shadowgate was released first in 1989 followed by deja vu and then uninvited in 1991. i remember seeing this game on the shelves and being excited about the adventure game aspects with the point-and-click interface we couldn't afford a computer that played graphic intensive games in our home as they were usually the price of an automobile back then so getting something similar to a computer gaming experience on the nintendo was fascinating to me and it was one of the first games that i remember buying with my own allowance money shadowgate has a pretty straightforward story you're the last in the line of kings and only you can stop an evil warlock from raising a giant behemoth which will destroy the world to stop him you'll have to venture into castle shadowgate and you know solve puzzles and stuff shadowgate opens with an ominous warning and drops you off right in front of the castle and here it is this is shadowgate the screen is divided into three basic main parts the upper left corner is the first person perspective of what your character is seeing in game the upper right is your inventory as well as your learned spells you can cycle through this using the commands located on the bottom and your regular commands are going to be down there as well you move the arrow around and you can point and click [Music] the commands are pretty straightforward to move around or either use the little nav screen on the lower left or just click on the door you want to go through on the view screen the navigation screen comes in handy because it basically gives you an indication of where all your exits are in the room which may not always be apparent if the graphics are a little garbled and there's usually a door behind your character that you can't technically see on the main screen you start off out in front of the castle and it's tempting to go tearing through the front door ready to defeat the evil warlock you walk through when a creepy set of eyes greets you with an ominous warning of certain death ahead then you attempt to proceed and you get a locked door ah but wait nope another locked door that's right both of the doors in this first room are locked you can look around but the game just taunts you that you seem to be wasting your time which it does often the only items you can interact with are these torches on the wall and the rug on the floor you can set the rug on fire in fact when in doubt in this game just torch the rugs you usually find something but nothing really happens in this first room it's a little cryptic and to the uninitiated it can leave you scratching your head and possibly even be a deal breaker if you go back outside the game warms of wolves off in the distance and that's basically the developers way of telling you the path lies forward not backward also i mentioned those torches and that's important because they basically act like a timer on how long it takes you to solve all the puzzles and eventually beat the game you have to keep at least one lit torch in your inventory so you can see where you're going when the torch starts to die off you need to light another one asap the music even changes to this creepy tune and that's your cue that something's about to happen run out of torches and you're dead you find more along the way as you explore the castle and there are plenty to beat the game but it's something to keep in mind anyway getting back to this first part here's the thing if you push the start or select button sometimes the game will give you a little hint to help you out if you go back out to the front of the castle and push select the game reads the secret thoughts of the skull can be yours i wonder what that could mean should we punch it nothing happened what if we open it viola it's a key that you can use to open up one of the doors and proceed with your quest now we can move into the first room and use the key to open the door and proceed with our quest so let's check out this second room this looks interesting a couple of torches we can definitely take those okay hmm there's a stone on the wall that looks a little different can we open that hey cool a secret passage all right and there's a book sitting there on this ledge can we take it nope when you remove the book from its pedestal the floor collapses and you fall to your death the grim reaper himself even makes an appearance to claim your soul it's a sad thing that your adventures have ended here it sure is so that's basically what this game is all about trial and error solve problems and see what happens the cool thing is is that you can save your game save early save often kids this was one of the first games that i recall owning that actually had saved functionality built into it i was always fascinated by that concept the game's quest was so long and so epic that you may have to actually save it and come back to play at another time really though it's because you're probably gonna die a lot trying to guess and check your way through the puzzles so that's basically what this game is just pointing and clicking your way through castle shadowgate solving puzzles and along the way you'll encounter trolls wraiths gargoyles cyclops mutant dogs skeletons werewolves dragons giant snakes and whatever this thing is [Music] the graphics may be a little simplistic but i felt like the 3d environments were created well and combined with the spooky music gave just the right mood and ambiance for exploring this creepy old castle [Applause] [Music] i also loved the written descriptions and this reminded me of old text adventures on the computer games like moon mist but looking back now some of these were pretty intense for a game that little kids are probably going to be playing you drive the sword deep into the cyclops blood pours out of the wound and onto the grass as you consume the liquid in the vial your body convulses and death spasms quickly follow you enter a cold room the stench of flesh and decay pervades the small chamber you try to pass the slime but it engulfs your body dissolving it in seconds you die instantly the grim reaper stands below waiting to catch you holy crap really this game has a lot of adult themes to it and it's crazy to think i was probably 9 or 10 when i first played it check out the blood when you kill this werewolf there's also all sorts of red herrings along the way doors that you can't quite reach but ultimately go nowhere booby traps and treasures you can't actually collect there's just the right amount to keep you guessing without being too frustrated [Music] so as much as i enjoy this game i have a rather embarrassing story to tell now you have to keep in mind i was a kid when i got this but here goes i could not for the life of me figure out how to find the key to get past that first area i just kept going back and forth between the outside and the inside and eventually i ran out of torches and died in the darkness then the game got put up on the shelf for like 6 weeks i eventually load it to a friend well my friend came back a day later and told me about the key hidden in the skull out front yep i'm an idiot however i feel as though little quirks like that are what spurred the way i play games now where i'm constantly looking in every nook and cranny trying to find out what the programmers may have hid in there i've mentioned before on this channel about my experiences of gaming with ocd and i feel like little teaching moments such as this were all a part of what shaped my mentality about solving problems in games and in real life today and that's really the thing video games in life in general it's probably just 90 solving a problem of some sort learning to think outside the box and learning to try new things [Music] as for whether or not this game is worth playing today for me personally i'd say yes it's a point-and-click pc adventure game experience right on your nes console i can understand though if this game isn't for everybody and the point-and-click interface especially with the slow cursor speed could be a turn off for some folks it could just be an acquired taste either you'll love replaying all of the mcventure series games or none this is particularly cheap though in the resellers market and usually goes for under 10 the other entries in the nes iteration of the mcventure series are a little more expensive shadowgate also spawned a couple of direct sequels and even a modernized remake someday i'll go back and look at the rest of the mcventures series but for now i just want to celebrate my personal experiences playing shadowgate on the nes overall this is one of my favorite gaming memories and i'll always appreciate the experience of playing shadowgate through the first time thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] do [Music] godzilla the movie monster first appeared on film in 1954 and has been terrorizing movie screens ever since if you've been living under a rock for the last 60 years godzilla is a giant prehistoric sea monster that causes mayhem and chaos everywhere he goes even when he's just trying to help let's see how the godzilla story translated over to the video game world on this edition of friday night arcade well when it comes to godzilla games you can't go back much further than this godzilla first appeared in 1983 for the commodore 64 developed by glen fisher and published by codeworks it's a real-time strategy battle simulator where godzilla will randomly appear somewhere on the map and start making his way toward japan you can strategize your attacks via land sea or air although once he gets to shore there's not much you can do except throw everything you've got at him and hope for the best you can decide how many troops you want to send adam but usually 75 end up dying in the process and godzilla just swats you away like flies occasionally he'll go on a rampage killing hundreds of thousands or even millions it's possible to eventually beat him if you just keep using your resources but odds are most of japan will be dead in the process you also have the option to nuke godzilla but if you do 65 million people die tokyo is destroyed and godzilla will be declared the winner anyway the moral of the story here is that nuclear weapons are bad which was kind of the point of the original movies next up godzilla and the martians developed by neil streeter and released by temptation software in 1983 for the zx spectrum the martians have invaded the girl of your dreams is stuck at the top of a building site protecting her from the evil invaders is a friendly monster now it's up to you to get up there and rescue her watch out for the pits which you will have to jump over so i guess it's a half-assed donkey kong clone with space invaders sprites instead of barrels and the monster is protecting the girl at the top instead of holding her hostage well that's something let's try to get over oh no oh no godzilla versus three major monsters i i'm not making that up that's actually the name developed and published in 1984 by bandai for the msx hey now this is more like it you actually get to control godzilla move around in three dimensions and you can even shoot godzilla's atomic breath the game is pretty short you basically just have to defeat three monsters first up is megalon who tunnels up through the ground interestingly once one of these tunnels is made it stays on the screen and godzilla can actually fall into it then you fight several kumungas and after that you fight king ghydora while protecting manila that's the son of godzilla i love the arcade sound effects background details and the sprites here there's not much to it but it's definitely a step in the right direction for early godzilla games next up fierce dragon godzilla metropolis destruction developed and published again by bandai this was released in 1985 for the pc x1 and the fm7 unfortunately i have no way of playing this game which is a shame because i like the way the graphics look the player would take control of godzilla going through towns and forests raising heck and running up a high score you could step on tanks and shoot the atomic breath at soldiers too dang this actually looks really cool if anyone has actually played this one i'd love to hear your experience with it well we've got a couple more here for the msx both by touhou gojira kun released in 1985. what the heck is this it's fashioned as a kind of weird puzzle game your godzilla i guess each of these other monsters running around is technically a monster from the godzilla franchise if you can believe that godzilla can punch push rocks and climb up and down these vines so the goal in each level is to destroy all of the rocks destroy them all in a power-up appears that transports you to the next level i okay monster's fair released for the msx in 1986 this time you get to play as mothra or at least a mothra larva huh a ufo kidnaps these girls and now you take control of mothra to rescue them from the space monsters including godzilla yeah you actually fight against godzilla this time looks just like him right mothra can move around in all four directions but the screen doesn't let you go down once you start to head upwards i guess the goal is to get the high score but you can just race through the levels and technically not shoot any monsters at all [Music] the movie monster game released for the apple ii and commodore by epics in 1986. this is my favorite of the bunch instead of a storyline they opted for more of a caveman ugg olympic style game you can play as godzilla or a couple of other random knockoff movie monsters a giant wasp called spectra the glogg a giant tarantula called tarantus a giant robot called mechatron and the stay puff marshmallow man's half cousin mr meringue oh this is epic you can choose the location as well as the type of scenario you want to play out for example in berserk mode the goal is to destroy as many vehicles and buildings as you can in escape you have to get out of the city before the military destroys you there's an option to destroy a landmark and there's also lunch mode you just go around eating as many people as you can and you even have a hunger meter and all of this takes place on a movie screen with an audience watching the very essence of the godzilla and monster movie genre there's even little ads that run before each scenario like this commercial for gummy glogs and they took the time to make up little specific backstories for each character and they're even scenario specific he strode out of nowhere a towering morass of sticky meringue some say he was cooked up in a bakery near chernobyl others claim he was the second prize entry of one mrs johansen in a bakeathon in moorhead minnesota whatever the case they call him mr morang and now he's headed into new york stuck on the idea of destroying the landmark the actual game is isometric action where you move around in all directions and just smash stuff and eat people the sound effects are fun and it's cool just going around stomping stuff to bits this is what a godzilla monster game should be it's great no reason to get too complicated about it you get a hilarious little epilogue too in one situation i played the lunch scenario with godzilla and although i managed to eat enough people to run down the hunger meter i didn't make it out of the city in time before the military killed me there's a thunderous boom as tons of dinosaur meat crashes under the street at least he had one last good meal [Music] rounding out godzilla games on the 80s it's godzilla monster of monsters developed by compile and released by toho for the nintendo entertainment system in 1989. i like the story here somewhere in the future 2000's a.d pluto and neptune exchange positions in the solar system then earth receives a declaration of war from an unknown planet that mysteriously appears the invaders from planet x attack earth as part of their plan to conquer the universe using a fleet of space monsters so the people of earth do the only reasonable thing by sending godzilla and mothra into space to defend us that's just awesome so you navigate mothra and godzilla through space on these boards that look like some kind of intergalactic chess each space on the board is called a ring field and you have to make your way through them all to defeat the invaders from planet x along the way you'll battle across space stations and planets every time you enter a ring field the goal of each of these boards is to make it all the way through and take over the enemy's base on the other side then you get to move to the next board which represents another area in the solar system eventually making your way to planet x but the enemy has their own pieces to move across the board in the form of space monsters if godzilla or mothra runs into one of these monsters then you have to battle them [Music] these are all monsters from random godzilla movies or other miscellaneous monster movies gigan hedorah and mechagodzilla among others some of the monsters weren't even from godzilla movies at all which is a little weird i would have liked to have seen a deeper roster of godzilla villains to fight along the way but to be honest that's just the tip of the iceberg this game has some serious problems first of all these monster battles are kind of lame despite the fact that you're in space and going across all these planets the actual monster battles just take place in a vacuum of total darkness there's no background at all it's just two monsters battling in nothing and there's also a time limit if you take too long to defeat a monster it just sends you back across the ring field board and the monster regains some of its life then if you manage to defeat one of the monsters it doesn't matter because it just respawns in the next level along with a new monster by the time you get to the end all the monsters are sitting there waiting for you and if you can somehow get through all of them then you get to fight king ghydora unfortunately getting that far will test the sanity of even the most skilled and patient players each one of these ring fields along the way is its own level and they're an exercise in frustration you can play as either mothra or godzilla and neither one really gives you much of an advantage godzilla trudges across the screen all plottingly getting blitzed in the face by hordes of enemies and it seems like he's constantly getting pushed back these things are relentless not to mention running into random obstacles like you know rocks and stuff he can punch kick and swing his tail along with firing his atomic breath but it doesn't seem like any of it helps much the game is pretty liberal with power ups to refill your life bar but for some reason they're always getting pushed towards the right of the screen while you keep getting pushed backwards to the left it's just a tease get over here come on if you play as mothra you can fly over some of the obstacles but her projectiles don't do much damage and whenever she gets hit she gets flunk backwards halfway across the screen i'll keep the ranch short and just say that they had some good ideas here i like the idea of having to fight through several monsters and some of the background graphics and music aren't bad but ultimately i don't think i can recommend this version unless you're just really hard up for some godzilla i don't know am i being too hard on this one what do you think what's your favorite godzilla game of all time 80s era or otherwise thank you for watching and we'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] meet paul the most unremarkable magician in the land of burlwood life was good in merle wood peaceful sitting around drinking goat's milk but then an evil wizard named abaddon conquered muralwood and defeated all of the other powerful magicians in the land now paul is going to have to show the world he's more than mediocre the name of the game is magician find out all about it on this edition of friday night arcade magician was developed by eurocom and released by taxin in 1990 for the nintendo entertainment system magician is for all intensive purposes an action rpg but it's definitely one of the more unique titles for the nes for starters despite being an rpg you basically just go to the right it's a little bit like simon's quest but even more simplified there's no overworld or exploring in that sense sometimes you have to backtrack a bit to the left to check out a shop or unlock a clue but in general you're just going forward it's got all the things you'd expect from a basic rpg you can talk to folks enter shops buy potions items and spells and equip them on your character but it's all just a bit different for starters your character has a hunger and thirst meter that runs down constantly even if you're just standing in place that's right it's a survival rpg it runs down fast too if you stand in place for too long paul starves to death and it's game over oh come on paul it's only been like eight minutes so at all times you need to be aware of your hunger and thirst i spent about an hour exploring the first town and half that time was just spent backtracking to the shop to replenish my food and water stores paul can also buy spells although this system is totally different in order to explain that i'll need to explain the inventory system for the most part this is straightforward you've got your character stats here in the middle the box at the top is what you're holding in your hand the second box is the spell you presently have equipped pressing b uses whatever you have equipped in your hands food water an item whatever pressing a uses whatever spell you have equipped that's another thing there's no jump button when i first played the game i was just running around and checking out the controls and i accidentally used up all my water and had to restart but anyway so you've got your spells and now here's this box in the middle with all these symbols it turns out you can manually enter your own spells without buying them if you know the symbols to enter in fact nintendo power even encourages you to cheat the system anytime you enter a town just save your game buy all the spells write down or take a picture of the symbols that make up the spells you bought then reload the game and manually enter them in your spell book for free then save your money for food water and potions hey it works and you can technically just start the game with every spell if you know the symbols but it's a little tedious going through the process of buying reloading and entering all of these especially since there's over 30 spells in the game why not just have enough currency available throughout the game to buy what you need sometimes the townsfolks will give you gold or you'll find some from exploration but it's just not enough you can also experiment and just try to make up your own spell by entering in random symbols but you'll probably just end up killing yourself that's all just the tip of the iceberg though this game has some issues that make everything more frustrating than it needs to be so basically you just go around each area exploring talking to folks solving puzzles occasionally defeating enemies when you're done exploring an area you can proceed forward to the next area but that's just it unless you've got your handy nintendo power to tell you what all spells you should have before you leave an area it's possible to get stuck later in the game if you're missing a specific spell or item once you leave an area you can't go back so although technically it's possible to leave this first town if i haven't collected all of the spells or the right items such as the sunglasses i'll have to restart the game does have a save function built in but you have a limited amount of saves that you can use and with the hunger and thirst meter always running in the background it's tempting to want to save your game as often as you can there's a finite amount of currency and items in the game so you want to maximize your food and water reserves as best as possible but the game does nothing to help you out in that department heck you could starve to death just trying to talk to folks in a town they walk the same speed as you and don't slow down chasing down everybody is a chore hey come back you basically have to wait for them to turn around towards you and then hit the talk button at the exact moment they intersect with your character defeating enemies is a bit of an ordeal too it's not always clear what spell will inflict damage you've got several offensive spells such as axe fireball lightning and so forth but it seems like only one or two spells may actually work against a foe you'll know a spell works if the enemy flashes grey but otherwise it just bounces off of them so you have to fire a shot see if it works then go into your inventory screen and cycle through to the next one until you find one that does work meanwhile they're relentlessly pelting you with damage and the whole time you're probably on the verge of starvation and if you do find a spell that works it will probably still take a million shots to defeat the bad guy you can select the level of damage that you want the spell to do instead of spells just getting more powerful over time as your character progresses you can just pick from one being the weakest or four being the most powerful but you don't just want to always use the highest level because that will drain your mana too fast everything about this game is a constant balancing act to further add insult to injury not only is managing your food and water rations a constant battle you can only carry up to three of each item if you're at a store it simply won't let you purchase more if you already have the max you have to leave the store consume the food then go back in and buy more of it so you're constantly budgeting time spent walking versus consuming food and water and anytime you find a shop that sells it you're going to want to stand outside and top off everything then go back inside and restock your inventory in the first town they put the food shop near the start after i was confident i'd found everything and was ready to proceed to the next area i backtracked to the shop to top off my rations one last time before headed to the wilderness then my hunger and thirst were reduced by a large percentage just walking back to the end of town paul really needs to learn a metabolism spell and later in the game you start finding treasure chests that contain food but if you're already carrying the max of that particular item you're out of luck for example here i was already carrying three pieces of bread and when i opened up the chest there was bread inside there's no option to just eat the food while you're examining the treasure chest either so okay maybe i can just leave the treasure chest eat the food to make room then go back in and explore it nope as soon as you leave the treasure chest screen the chest disappears okay a little later i defeated a boss and a treasure chest appears alright this time i'll be ready and just eat some food ahead of time nope the treasure chest disappeared before i could even get to it and my lightfoot spell wore off so i sunk in the marsh and died anyway oh come on what the crap paul i really wanted to like this game story time kids back in 1991 when 10 year old me subscribed to nintendo power magician was featured heavily in the first issue i ever received in the mail i remember reading all about it looking at the screenshots and thinking this must be an epic adventure but i was at that age where your game library is pretty much relegated to whatever game your family bought for you for christmases or birthdays or whatever they had to rent at the local video store so 27 years later i was really excited about finally getting to try this one out for the first time i feel like there's potential here i like the graphic design and i love the music it's one of the best original scores on the nes unfortunately i just didn't have the patience to finish this one if someone wants to make a rom hack to slow down the hunger and thirst meter add in a little more currency so you don't have to mess with entering all the spells slow down the npcs in town remove or at least raise the max amount of items you can carry and do away with disappearing treasure chests well then you've got yourself a pretty awesome little nes rpg i don't know what do you think did you play this one growing up or perhaps discover it recently am i being too harsh thank you for watching and we'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] hey i wanted to let you know real quick that i'm reopening my let's play channel come hang out with me all week long over at friday night arcade plays where i'll be playing some old and new stuff thank you for watching and hope to see you there at friday night arcade plays [Music] deja vu was the first game in the mcventure series initially released in various computer formats in 1985 although it wasn't ported over to the nintendo entertainment system until 1990. it technically came out after shadowgate for the nes these games were developed by icom simulations and released on the nes by kimko i go into a little bit more detail about the overall mcventure series in my shadowgate review so for now let's just stick to deja vu although the story is not at all related to shadowgate the interface is all pretty much the same you've got your commands on the bottom inventory on the upper right and a first person perspective of what your character is seeing on the upper left you point and click with the cursor which acts like a mouse pointer and you can interact with the environment with these basic commands it's too bad there wasn't some sort of mouse peripheral for the original nintendo because that would have been handy but to be honest back in the day when i was a little kid playing these mcventure games on the nes for the first time i didn't know any better so it never really bothered me this time instead of a heroic quest through a mysterious old castle like in shadowgate you plunge yourself into the seedy criminal underbelly of 1941 chicago the story is a murder whodunit with all sorts of film noir elements you wake up in the bathroom stall of a bar with a terrible headache and blood all over your hands you have no idea how you got there and in fact you have no memory of who you are at all sounds pretty much like college right you've also got a mysterious puncture wound on your arm and not to say too much else about the story but it's heavily implied that you've been framed for some sort of murder you go around exploring your surroundings looking for clues to your identity as well as trying to figure out what exactly happened and trying to clear your name with the cops so basically you just wander around the streets of chicago searching for clues shuffling through drawers files and notes finding keys and evidence trying to figure out exactly what happened i always love playing these kind of games and it's just a nice chill experience solving the puzzles and immersing yourself in the story looking back at this game now it's pretty wild to think i played this when i was like 10 and on the nintendo for that matter it all lends itself to the gritty detective storyline but there are some crazy adult themes here your character has blood all over his hands when he first wakes up you immediately find a gun a mugger points a gun at you and flat out murders you if you don't defend yourself some crazy woman also murders you with a gun on the street if you're not careful at one point you walk into a gun shop and buy guns and ammo and the shop owner has a beer belly there's car bombs and you can get blown up when you're exploring someone's pin out suite there's a picture of a nude woman on the wall you find a random dead body in this guy's office it's violent too oftentimes the solution involves punching people technically your character was a former boxer so for once in these games using the hit command actually does something you're just going around cold cocking muggers drunk hobos and hookers right in the face some snooty butler giving you a hard time in the face buddy and after that you can hit the slot machines at the casino every 10 year old kids idea of fun right the descriptions in the game are in no way meant for kids either sometimes they're kind of hilarious but sometimes they're pretty graphic it's a 38th special go ahead and make your day it's a man who appears to be lacking something namely life there are three bullet holes in him a shotgun blast from under the counter has just turned you into shreds you're on the fire escape when there's a fire you can use it to escape hmm nice tip now to be fair this game was originally made on computer and meant for a more mature audience a lot of the stuff got censored like in the office with the dead body in the computer version there's actual visible blood there's some other stuff too when you're in the bar you can take a shot of booze right off the counter although in the nes version it's just seltzer at one point you have to put medicine in a capsule to consume it although in the computer version it was actually a drug syringe weirdly enough it still mentions having a puncture wound on your arm though so i guess they forgot to edit that part out in the nes version you don't find out much about the murderous woman in the street but in the computer version it flat out says she's a hooker who just got out of prison and when you punch her it makes a pun about her getting right hooked that's awesome even the box arc got changed the nes version just has the hero in a trench coat but check out the original box art for the computer version look at all this stuff there's poker chips and playing cards a gun a crumpled up pack of lucky strikes no really that's an actual brand name pack of cigarettes and on the back of the box there's booze and drugs complete with a syringe it's a wonder this game was allowed to be ported to the nintendo at all there's some other weird stuff going on in the game here too what exactly was this chair used for why is there a heavyset woman tied up and gagged in the trunk of this mercedes benz sometimes the game heckles you too which is always fun if you examine yourself the game says you're doing a great job keep trying and when you die it reads odds were against you it was only a matter of time before you reach the end thanks for that vote of confidence guys i always love these types of puzzle adventure games where it gives you a little bit of freedom to try stuff and just see what happens these games all had a pretty liberal save feature so you can just try stuff and mess around sometimes punching gets you out of a situation but sometimes it backfires like if you punch the owner of the gun shop he blows you away with a shotgun you can just turn this wine spigot on or off doesn't do anything or gets you further in the game but hey want to leave the taxi cab without paying give it a try and see what happens you can even open up the lid on this toilet bowl if you really want to you are relieved that you find nothing inside phew i can understand if this type of thing isn't for everybody though it can get a little bit tedious fumbling through your inventory especially with the slow cursor that you have to control with the d-pad for example here you have to use the open command to open the desk drawer then do another command to take the envelope inside then you have to toggle through your inventory open the envelope and use the take command again to remove the bill inside and physically add it to your inventory then you have to scroll back through your inventory and examine the bill to find out what it is that's five different commands and a lot of fiddling with your inventory just to finally examine one clue and this sort of thing happens all throughout the game now to 10 year old me this sort of thing was awesome and i didn't care i loved the immersion and also the feeling like i was playing a computer game right on my nintendo console but i could see how someone picking up this game for the first time today in the modern era may have some difficulty acclimating to this sort of play style musically i enjoyed most of the tracks they're not bad and definitely set the mood of the game there's one that even sounds like it could have been straight from castle shadowgate [Music] overall it's not bad just maybe not as memorable as some of those iconic themes from shadowgate from a graphics standpoint could be better could be worse you didn't really need spectacular graphics for a game like this and you have to remember in the late 80s we weren't nearly as spoiled as we are today all in all i enjoyed this game a lot both as a kid and now but i understand if this isn't for everybody these mcventure games are an acquired taste you either love them or you hate them personally i could have played through a new one every year if they would have made them the interesting adult themed storyline and relaxed play style as well as the freedom to explore at your own pace is just awesome to me they did also make an adventure sequel specifically to deja vu called lost in las vegas which i've not actually played yet that one wasn't ported to the nes although they did eventually release it as a combo pack for the game boy advance what do you think did you enjoy games from the mcventure series growing up either on computer or on the nes what are some games similar to this but not necessarily part of the mcventure series that you remember playing did you have one in particular that was your favorite i think for me my favorite is still shadowgate but i enjoyed all of these games a great deal and the puzzles in deja vu make just enough sense to where it can be solved without a walkthrough if you're willing to put in the time if you've never played it give it a shot sometime and see what you think thank you for watching and see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] metal storm was developed by tamtix and released by irem for the nintendo entertainment system in february of 1991. if irem sounds familiar that's because they're mostly known for the incredibly challenging r-type space shooter series metal storm is a run-and-gun shooter of sorts in the year 2501 a solar defense giant mechanized laser system earth setup on pluto has gone bonkers and started destroying planets the laser is called cyborg and the bastard just took out neptune yes neptune your days of sitting around being unremarkable are over now the laser is pointed right at earth and the only way to stop it is to use the m308 gunner it's basically a big mech warrior enter the cyborg and activate the self-destruct system to destroy it you take control of the m308 gunner and on the surface this looks like a pretty standard shoot-em-up platformer but there's one big difference you can manipulate gravity that's right the one constant you could count on in any platform game just got turned upside down pushing up plus the jump button reverses gravity and now you're just walking on the ceiling it affects the enemies too this is impressive pushing down plus jump sends it back the other way and you'll definitely have to master this effect in order to go far in metal storm it's a bit tricky because once you start the gravity reversal process you can't reverse it again until you've landed on the floor or the ceiling but you can't jump and then reverse it while your character is in midair this all performs very smoothly on the nes and there's no limit to how many times you can reverse gravity one thing that really stuck out to me was the level design the ability to reverse gravity could have just been a simple gimmick thrown together with a contra style run and gun but instead the levels actually utilize it in a very unique way that forces you to think your way through it it messes with your mind too the first time i ran across the ceiling to make it over a pit of spikes just screwed with all my video game sensibilities in a way that was wonderfully uneasy some of the levels also tend to scroll up and down in some sort of infinite space you can even get stuck in a never-ending loop here i can see this power up above me but there's a steel platform and i can't jump through it to get through so i'm going to have to actually jump down and loop in from the other side it's just weird man some of these platforms also allow you to pass through them only if you're jumping from a specific direction so here for instance i have to reverse the gravity and stand on the ceiling then jump from the ceiling to pass through this platform and move on through the level there's all sorts of weird intricate little areas like this with these single directional gates gates that open and close with gravity and then these electrified pincers that attack you when you're passing through okay so this game isn't quite as unforgiving as our type but there's definitely some unfair deaths and trial and error along the way enemies that are placed in just the right spot as well as areas that challenge you to master gravity reversal you'll die often but you've got unlimited continues and a generous password system so it never really got frustrating you can just keep trying until you get it right and there's plenty of power ups to help you out some shields stronger weapons and there's one that lets you launch yourself like a missile as you shift gravity graphically the game looks great although your character doesn't match the game's promotional artwork for some reason still though it's detailed and the animation looks cool this game also utilized a bit of coding wizardry to pull off parallax scrolling giving levels a true sense of depth this subconsciously adds to screwing with your sensibilities when you're shifting gravity and dancing on the ceiling the music isn't bad but not necessarily all that memorable boss fights will force you to think outside the box it's not a terribly long game speed runners get through it in about 20 minutes but you'll probably need at least a few hours or so with all the trial and error and just taking time to get used to the controls there's also an expert level that you can unlock after you beat the game really this game is all about just spending time with the gravity effect and getting used to it like i said before the first time i walked and jumped on the ceiling it was awkward and i wasn't at all confident my guy wouldn't just plummet to the floor but after 10 minutes it felt a lot more natural it's a peculiar concept i'd like to see get utilized more and i would love to see for this game to get some sort of reboot unfortunately it's just always kind of lingered in 8-bit obscurity despite positive reviews and even a cover shoot on nintendo power this game just never really took off and that's a shame it's expensive and difficult to find now too and usually runs about 100 bucks loose so a lot of people may never get the chance to play it i do recommend seeking it out and giving it a shot if you're into platformers and just want something different though metal storm is a wonderfully creative stroke of brilliance that deserves to be experienced by all fans of the 8-bit platforming genre so what do you think did you play this one growing up or did you get a chance to play it later on at some point would you like to see a metal storm reboot at some point or another thank you for watching and we'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] [Music] was developed by hudson soft and released in 1987. or is it facts and nadu faksinandu facts ado facts and i don't know but i'm sure no matter how i say it someone will correct me in the comments thanks internet it was supposedly a combination of xanadu and famicom so i'm gonna go with fax and antu this was actually a spin-off from the dragon slayer series of games developed by falcom for the msx although a lot of those games ended up on the famicom at some point you take control of a nameless hero who just returned from an epic adventure only to find that your hometown of iolas has fallen into ruin you visit the king to find out what happened and he tells you the dwarves that live at the top of the world tree found a meteorite with eerie powers the dwarves went insane started ransacking the town and now all the wells are drying up you're the last hope to defeat the dwarves and restore the town to its former glory makes perfect sense right okay good so it's actually a pretty straightforward little rpg you can walk around and talk to the townsfolk as well as enter shops to purchase food weapons and armor it reminds me a bit of the game magician that i reviewed a while back but thankfully this time there's not a constant hunger meter and thirst meter to deal with one thing that's worth pointing out is that this game starts you off with virtually nothing you have no weapons minimal health no way to defend yourself as well as no gold to purchase anything or gold's as the game likes to call it so if you just go tearing off out of town without first gearing up you won't last very long first you'll need to talk to the priest to get the elf ring so you're identified as a member of the town then jump over some spiked monsters and talk to the king where he tells you what's going on and gives you some gold now backtrack through the town and hire the martial arts guru to train you how to fight this also restores your health a little then hire the magician to train you how to use magic which restores your magic a little too next go to the tool shop and buy a hand dagger and a potion after that you'll go next door to the key shop and buy a key because otherwise you won't be able to exit the town of course not then go to the meat store to buy some dried meat that restores your health the rest of the way up okay did you get all that now we're ready to go off exploring and head to the next town along the way you run into monsters like bouncing skulls spiked turtle shells that totally aren't from the mushroom kingdom and zombies the play control is iffy maybe i'm just getting old but it seemed like i had a harder time jumping over the spiked shells without taking damage than i should have the bouncing skull heads take multiple hits to die and your dagger has a pretty short range so you just kinda have to stand at the edge of their jumping pattern and keep swinging your dagger around like an idiot until they come to you it's not a deal breaker or anything and you do get better weapons and armor as you progress through the game just something to be aware of you do get golds along the way as you defeat certain enemies the bouncing skull heads drop golds but they're so awkward to kill that who'd want to spend hours killing them to earn money this game reminds me a lot of simon's quest it's a non-linear world to explore and sometimes you have to stay in one place and keep killing enemies just to earn enough currency to buy some crucial item you need to proceed if you hated simon's quest for that this may not be the game for you this game also breaks the rules a bit so after you've been to a couple of towns it's time to enter the tower of trunk up to this point the spiked turtle shells don't seem to drop off the ledges so you can safely pass underneath them but apparently they do know how to climb ladders surprise jerks they also put one on a really awkward platform that you have to get past there's no way to get past it unless you bought the deluge magic also you had to purchase another key for 100 golds just to get into the trunk tower but if you leave the tower the door relocks and you have to buy another key and if you die there's a password feature but you still lose all your gold so you have to keep killing the awkward jumping skulls to earn more money so let me get this straight you give me this stubby little dagger and the only way to earn money is to kill these jumping skulls that you can't hit ah come on dudes don't have negative thoughts remember your mantra okay so this game's really not too bad i backtracked bought the deluge magic which gives you a projectile weapon hey that's more like it it doesn't even take that much magic to use it really this game is kind of cool once you get the hang of it i like this simple art style and goofy looking characters and it's got a sense of humor about it also is that guy smoking a cigarette what the there's all sorts of characters smoking this is a nintendo game holy crap the music is pretty cool too although the best track i can find is actually on the title screen [Music] overall i feel like this game is worth checking out today if you don't mind some of the awkward mechanics it's definitely not a run to the right kill everything that moves kind of game the enemies all have awkward patterns and you'll have to exercise some patience as you proceed still though it's kind of fun just playing through the story and i could see myself playing this one all the way to the end it's a bit of a tease but if you're motivated enough you could keep killing these guys in the trunk tower that drop 100 gold every time backtrack to this shop just outside of town and buy the most powerful shield and second most powerful magic in the game there you go i feel like although this game definitely isn't perfect you could do a lot worse what do you think did you play this one growing up i'd be curious to know your experiences with this one if you enjoyed this video and you're new to the channel here's a playlist with some of my other nes videos that you may enjoy thank you so much for watching and see you next week on friday night [Music] arcade 11 world-class contenders take them down with your controller beat them all and you've got a shot at tyson's title mike tyson's punch out takes a relatively simple concept and executes it in a nearly flawless and truly special way it features simple gameplay mechanics over-the-top memorable characters and a lasting challenge that still taunts players to this day some even regard mike tyson as one of the hardest boss fights in the history of video games players are also still finding out secrets decades after its initial release let's take a closer look at this classic from its roots in the arcades to its lasting memories on the nintendo entertainment system it's mike tyson's punch out on this edition of friday night [Music] [Applause] arcade when most people think of punch out they probably go back to the 1987 classic released on the nintendo entertainment system that featured boxing champion mike tyson however punch-out originated in the arcades nintendo developed and released the arcade machine simply titled punch-out first releasing it in japan in 1983 and then later in europe and north america in 1984 the general manager of nintendo's integrated research and development division genio takata created the game alongside makoto wada it's worth noting that takata and wada were also responsible for the creation of another short-lived series that is very near to my heart startropics the arcade version of punch out is actually the memory i most go back to when i think of the series and not the nes version [Applause] every wednesday when i was a kid my family and i would go to the local bowling alley which had a punch out arcade machine controlling this green wire frame dude and trying to knock the other guy out that's punch out to me i never got very far in this version although there wasn't too far to go the game featured just six opponents and technically if you managed to beat them all it would just keep looping back through them until you lost or ran out of quarters in this version it actually wasn't possible to win a fight by decision the only way to win was either by knockout or if you could manage to knock your opponent down three times nobody ever gets up after a third knockdown the game featured impressive graphics for the time as well as digitized speech and realistic crowd noises all of the elements combined to create an intoxicating big boxing match atmosphere that is still seared into the brains of anyone who played it to this day later that same year nintendo developed and released the arcade follow-up super punch-out this version featured fewer opponents than the first one but several of these boxers would go on to become quite memorable recurring characters in the series nintendo later went on to release a special gold cartridge of punch out in japan for the famicom as part of a nintendo famicom golf tournament in 1987. only 10 000 of these special cartridges were ever produced and they are highly sought after by collectors often going for several hundred dollars on the secondary markets this version of the game had a few minor differences in gameplay and sound to the tyson version that would be released a few months later and also featured a different final boss fight as the nes and famicom systems were skyrocketing in popularity nintendo readied the retail release of a home version of its popular boxing arcade game but it was still missing one crucial element which would ultimately catapult it into the status of legend the game's namesake while younger audiences of today may be more relatable to combat sports such as mixed martial arts in the ufc in the 80s the sport of boxing was still flourishing sugar ray leonard marvelous marvin hagler and evander holyfield were dominant in their craft and household names for most sports fans in the late 80s a young man out of brooklyn began turning heads as he seemingly walked through the competition and started climbing his way up the boxing ranks almost without effort his appearance menacing his punches devastating his name mike tyson nintendo of america president minoru arakawa saw one of tyson's fights in 1986 and was so enamored by tyson's physical dominance and otherworldly athletic prowess that he insisted they retain the rights to use his name and likeness in the upcoming punch-out release for the paltry fee of just fifty thousand dollars nintendo secured the rights for three years to call it mike tyson's punch out and not only would tyson's name be on the box but he would actually be featured as the final boss of the game touted as the dream fight in real life tyson was 31-0 and became heavyweight champion right around the time of the game's release with tyson at the seemingly peak of his popularity and athletic skill he was the perfect final ingredient to make this game fly off the shelves so how does this game actually work you play as little mac a small time boxer working his way up through the ranks of the world video boxing association mack even looks tiny but there was actually a valid reason for this he was a larger wireframe character that you could see through but the nes wasn't really capable of pulling that off so they just made him smaller to avoid blocking the view of your opponent it also gives little mac a kind of rugged underdog feel that probably benefited from the rocky films of the 80s a series of films starring sylvester stallone is an underdog boxer who goes on a series of title fights you control little mac by dodging left or right with the d-pad and you can press down to block the a and b buttons execute left and right body blow punches and if you hold up while pressing a or b you'll go for a higher punch to the face [Music] you've got a stamina bar as well as a heart meter if your heart meter gets down to zero your character gets winded and all you can do is dodge while your opponent attacks but you are unable to throw a punch you lose hearts by taking damage or if one of your punches gets blocked you can also occasionally get stars during fights if you have a star you can push the start button to unleash a massive uppercut [Applause] if you get knocked down you have to frantically tap the a and b buttons to try and get back up these game mechanics were ridiculously simple yet strikingly complex once you actually start playing the game as each opponent has their own series of fighting patterns the game gives you this simple series of rules and then it's up to you the player to figure out the pattern and execute the plan of attack to overcome your opponent [Music] speaking of which a large part of what makes punch-outs so memorable is the cadre of hilariously over the top and cartoonish opponents you have to take on as you progress through the boxing circuits the game is nice enough to put you up against glass joe at the beginning he's an aging boxer who's only won one fight out of a hundred this is as close as you're going to get to a tutorial for the game as he's pretty easy to take down but after that the difficulty really ramps up von kaiser in his righteous mustache piston honda and his honda dash attack don flamenco and his flamenco punch king hippo and his well i mean look at him he's freaking huge and they all had some sort of specific pattern typically with some sort of telegraph of their special move with a little practice you could figure out the exact time to land a punch and do serious damage for example piston honda steps back just before doing his piston punches and he twitches his eyebrow just a bit before throwing a jab wait for his eyebrow to twitch dodge the jabs and then go in for some jabs of your own king hippo seems nearly indestructible when you first face him but he also has a tell of his own when he opens his mouth punch him in the mouth which will cause his pants to fall down exposing a bandaged navel you can then go in for some rapid low punches of your own these characters all just seem to take on a life of their own and go beyond just being standard bad guys in a video game as you progress the characters get more and more over the top great tiger has a pet tiger and wears a turban to the ring that lights up just before his special move soda popinski was modified a bit from his arcade form he was originally known as vodka drunkinsky a vodka-swilling russian this was changed in the home console version for obvious reasons the taunts from the opposing boxers were also amusingly mean-spirited that's another thing between each round the opponent taunts you while you're getting terrible advice from your coach who always looks like he's completely terrified join the nintendo fun club gee thanks for the tip coach no seriously this guy's useless the only good thing here is that if you hold the select button on this screen you can get a little bit of an energy boost in the next round it only works once per fight though so in a three round fight you'll want to pick and choose your spots anyway the taunting they changed vodka drunkinski's name but they didn't change any of his taunts and he spouts off gems like i can't drive but i'm going to walk all over you after you lose we'll drink to your health he's just talking about soda right great tiger says so a pussycat wants to fight a tiger nothing can quite compare to the experience of getting your butt kicked by a heavily stereotyped opponent and then rubbing your nose in it for a little kid playing video games in the 80s eventually you'll make your way to one of the most imposing bosses in history and no it's not who you think you know who i'm talking about standing in at 6 2 298 pounds bald bull is one of the meanest fiercest opponents of all time for most players myself included this was usually where little mac's story ended when he goes in for his bull charge attack it typically spells doom for the unsuspecting player the first couple of times through even if you manage to dodge it he'll just keep doing it over and over again until one of you is knocked down for good however if you time a body blow just right during his bowl attack you can actually knock him down with one [Applause] blow makoto wada revealed a secret about the first bald bull fight that nobody knew about for 22 years there's a camera flash that goes off in the lower right corner of the crowd during his bowl attack and if you punch right when it flashes you'll easily land a body blow and win the fight fun fact bald bull is the only fighter in the game that must be defeated by knockout it's not possible to win by decision and in the ball bowl rematch he always gets up after the nine count there are some other quirks and tells like this too that aren't always obvious one such tale wasn't discovered for nearly 30 years a reddit user that goes by midwestern housewives posted a video on youtube showing that in the rematch with piston honda if you look closely at this bearded guy in the lower left corner of the crowd he ducks right when piston honda goes in for a special attack if you time a punch just right after the guy ducks you can knock piston honda out with one blow the same thing happens in the rematch with bald bull and you can time a knockout blow right when the same bearded guy in the audience ducks who would figure out something like that i mentioned rematches with certain characters and that's another thing about this game to save space on the cartridge they occasionally just had you face the same opponent again a little later in the game this time with an increased difficulty you have rematches with don flamenco piston honda and bald bull they also pulled a bit of digital trickery by having some of the characters swap palettes glass joe looks like don flamenco von keyser and great tiger paul bull and mr sandman so do popinsky and super macho man also mario is the referee and he's a crooked no good cheater i swear he purposely slow counts from time to time so what makes this game so great well all of the above on the surface it seems like a simple little concept but it's all executed to perfection the controls are straightforward and easy to understand the music and crowd noises are just the right mix to draw you into the fight the over-the-top bosses provide memorable experiences almost everyone has their own memory to share from fighting these insane characters the timing and patterns are tough to pick up at first but it's incredibly satisfying once you overcome the challenge and defeat the other boxers who doesn't remember the first time they were able to successfully dodge great tiger's tornado punches and finally knock him out [Music] and the adrenaline rush of getting knocked out and having to wildly mash the a and b buttons to get little mac back to his feet this all just works it's perfect and then if you can somehow make it through each circuit and defeat all of the other boxers you get rewarded with the game's namesake dream fight a championship match against the one and only iron mike tyson there he is a menacing 8-bit monstrosity that for just about all players represents an unstoppable nes boss for the ages [Music] [Music] his body may have been a pallet swap of piston honda but it didn't matter it was technically achievable to beat mike tyson either by decision or by knockout but it may as well have been impossible because this guy was notoriously brutal seriously this is it if you want a challenge fight mike tyson in mike tyson's punch out even the best of the best will probably end up throwing their controller in a bit of rage up to this point your opponents had some sort of pattern that could be figured out and exploited with a reasonable amount of practice but tyson has no straightforward pattern he has certain attacks that he uses but his timing is all over the place and it forces you to just be better at the game you can't predict his moves you just literally have to react you'll need to master the controls have lightning fast reflexes and you'll probably also need a little bit of luck it's definitely not something you'll be able to do in a few hours or possibly even a few weeks truth be told i still can't beat this guy if you pulled it off without cheating in some way i'd love to hear about it in the comments below but i just couldn't do it no matter how hard i tried [Music] the contract mike tyson had with nintendo only lasted three years after which time nintendo was no longer able to use his likeness in the game tyson was swapped out for a character called mr dream that was essentially the same guy and same difficulty level and the game was resold with the title of punch out oddly enough there technically was a sequel to this game that featured a boxer that totally wasn't mike tyson called power punch 2. this was developed by beam software under the supervision of nintendo this time you play as mark tough guy tyler totally not mike tyson and you have to travel through the universe beating up all of these alien boxers it was originally going to be mike tyson's intergalactic power punch but after tyson's personal life fell apart they changed the name and took out all references to tyson nintendo wasn't happy with the final version of the game although it did eventually get officially published by asc games other sequels in the series were released including a super punch out game on the super nes a wii version of punch out in 2009 and a different doc lewis's punch out was released for free to certain north american nintendo club members there were also a few spin-offs such as the 1985 arcade machine arm wrestling in 1985 there was also an unofficial port of the super punch-out arcade game on the commodore 64 zx spectrum and armstride called frank bruno's boxing although i certainly enjoyed the super nintendo version of punch out and the wii release rekindled much nostalgia among gamers nothing ever quite matched the success of the nes release of mike tyson's punch out it went on to sell over 3 million copies during its original run and is fondly remembered by gamers as well as critics nintendo power ranked it as the 6th greatest nes game of all time out of a library of over 700 officially licensed releases and it ranks fairly highly on just about any other similar list it's a must-have for any retro gaming enthusiast and if you've somehow missed it after all these years i highly recommend picking it up and giving it a try after all mike tyson is waiting for your challenge well what do you think what are some of your greatest memories with mike tyson's punch-out i'd love to hear how far you got in this game whether as a kid or if you went back and tried again after 30 years hey i do this sort of thing all the time here on this channel if you enjoyed this here's a playlist of other nes videos that you might also like and you can subscribe for new videos all the time you can also come hang out with me in a more casual setting on my let's play channel thank you so much for watching and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade on this edition of friday night arcade we're going to take a closer look at some sequels to nes games that you potentially missed along the way for various reasons such as being released only in japan or just being released on an entirely separate console these nes game sequels fell through the cracks and a lot of folks probably never got a chance to see them let's take a closer look at some of these interesting titles on this edition of friday night arcade upon defeating the final boss in the original shadowgate game on the nes your character is greeted by the king who gives you his daughter's hand in marriage and your dub the high lord of westland cool but there's also a cryptic message at the very end of the text that just says the first stories end this hinted that maybe there would be more entries in the shadowgate franchise although other similar point-and-click adventure games such as deja vu and uninvited were eventually released on the nintendo entertainment system we didn't really get a true sequel to the shadowgate story until much later on the nintendo 64 with shadowgate 64 trials of the four towers this game was not well received and just didn't really recapture the former glory of the original i rented it once and never really connected with it there was another planned sequel for the nintendo 64 entitled shadowgate rising but that project was eventually abandoned when it became clear the gamecube was about to take over there have been some remakes and reboots of shadowgate along the way and there was even an entry in the worlds of power book series dedicated to the shadowgate story however there is a sequel to shadowgate that most people probably never even heard of beyond shadowgate this was released on the turbografx 16 via the cd-rom add-on wait what so let me get this straight they made a series of point-and-click adventure games on the mac in the 80s ordered them over to the nintendo entertainment system in a slightly different order and then released a direct sequel to shadowgate on the cd-rom add-on for the turbografx 16 system that hardly anyone owned or could afford huh this was developed by icom simulations 2 just like the other game and released in 1993. this looks and feels like a shadowgate game so the interface is a little different we've switched to a third person view instead of a first person view instead of pointing and clicking with commands at the bottom of the screen you can use the select button to just switch your icon on the fly between various actions such as examine speak or take you can bring up your inventory and use items in real time to interact with your environment and solve puzzles the graphics are a slick 16-bit upgrade over the original and they even included voice acting to flesh out the story since it's all on cd-rom there is more to the events of the last few weeks than the murder of a king and false arrest of his air there looms a far greater threat which you must ultimately face within the walls of shadowgate there's multiple endings too which gives the game plenty of replay value this is awesome and i wish i would have gotten a chance to play through this one as a kid gradius is one of my favorite space shooters despite the fact that i'm terrible at gradius and space shooters in general but the fantastic music and cool graphic design always kept me coming back for more punishment unfortunately us audiences were gypped out of gradius 2 on home consoles we got gradius on the nes and gradius 3 on the super nintendo but gradius 2 never saw a release outside of japan on the famicom in 1988 until recently on the virtual console i want to talk about the famicom version though because they pulled off some pretty crazy things here konami used a special chip in the cartridge that pushed the famicom hardware to its 8-bit limits and it's a shame us audiences never got a chance to experience this i can only speculate that maybe it never got a us release because konami didn't want to fork out the extra production costs stateside that it would have taken to produce cartridges with the special chips this game is a must play for space shooter fans [Music] what why super mario bros 2. okay okay by now everyone knows the us release of super mario 2 was just a repackage of doki doki panic because nintendo thought the audience in the states wouldn't be able to handle the extreme difficulty of the real super mario brothers 2. and you probably got to look at this with the super mario all-stars re-release on the snes that had the original 3 super mario brothers games plus the real super mario 2 repackaged as the lost levels i never could get into this version though because the 16-bit remixes of all these classic games just feels like entirely different games to me i never spent much time with them so i'm talking about the real to goodness japanese only release of super mario brothers 2 released as a disc for the famicom disc system if you enjoyed the original i highly recommend seeking out the real super mario brothers 2 either on virtual console or somewhere playing through this is kind of surreal it looks and feels like the first one exact same music and graphics it feels more like an expansion pack to the first game than its own original thing but the difficulty is ramped up significantly with stage hazards like wind poison mushrooms trick warp zones that go backwards and the stages were designed by the devil you only get three lives but you do get unlimited continues so you can just keep trying you can also play as mario or luigi luigi can jump higher but he slides all over the place compared to mario there's also several secret levels if you can find them if you enjoy the original but don't really play it anymore because you've seen everything it has to offer definitely seek out the real super mario brothers 2 sometime [Music] ducktales 2 well ok so this isn't exactly breaking news either but a lot of folks missed out on this one it was released in 1993 which is kind of late in the nes lifespan thus making it pretty rare and hard to find these days aka ridiculously expensive a loose cartridge goes for over 150 bucks on the secondary market compared to the original which you can get for like 15 bucks ducktales 2 is basically the same game at least on the surface good music similar graphics and non-linear level design it looks and smells a lot like the first game except they added a power-up feature for scrooge's cane which you need to break bricks and open up new areas in the levels this makes for some backtracking across levels that could annoy some players also though the levels aren't nearly as pretty to look at as the first game they're all just kind of dank and boring compared to the exotic locations from the first game and the music well good isn't nearly as memorable overall this game just kind of feels like an awkward remix of the first game it's not at all terrible or anything i mean even a bad capcom mini-s game is still probably better than most of the other stuff out there but the hefty price tag will probably prohibit most folks from getting a chance to check this one out and to be honest you're not missing much [Music] well some things are better left on the cutting room floor power punch 2 is the unofficial sequel to mike tyson's punch-out that nintendo would be comfortable if you never found out about it was originally going to be titled mike tyson's intergalactic power punch this sequel didn't go into production until a couple of years after the original and this time it was outsourced the game was originally supposed to feature mike tyson but at this point tyson was in jail so they switched him out for mark tyler iron mike i mean uh mark claimed he could beat anyone in the universe so a bunch of aliens took him up on that you fight as mark tyler against aliens and robots in a totally forgettable intergalactic boxing competition nintendo took one look at the finished product and decided it wasn't worth publishing but chrome studios somehow suckered asc games into selling this thing this was a real nes cartridge that actually existed it only goes for about 20 bucks too so you could totally buy it as a gag gift for your friends [Music] well here's another game i had no idea even existed blaster master ii for the sega genesis i knew there were some game boy spin-offs a playstation version a we wear version and another on the switch but blaster master on sega genesis blaster master was one of my favorite games on the nes if you've been watching this channel for any period of time you ought to know because i use the stage 1 music almost all the time for my outros blaster master 2 builds upon the gameplay of the first one where you can move around in a somewhat non-linear level either in your tank or on foot if you've never played blaster master it's a lot like metroid and that you travel around exploring levels and finding power ups or items that help you proceed with the mission rather than simply just moving left to right i wish i could say i enjoyed blaster master 2 but it didn't necessarily grab me the way the first one did sunsoft outsourced the development of this one and it shows right away the music isn't nearly as good gone is that epic score from the first game and it's replaced with that generic sega genesis twang also this game reminds me a lot of super empire strikes back everything in its dog is out to kill you to the point where anytime you manage to kill something it almost always drops a heart you'll need as many as you can get because you'll constantly be taking damage also the levels aren't nearly as non-linear this time around compared to the first one they're mostly straightforward and really at the end of the day there's really only one way you can go i will say the graphics are neat to look at though it's weird seeing blaster master in 16 bit the tank animations look nice if you want a remix of blaster master you can pick this one up for about 20 bucks well here's another one i never knew about hudson's adventure island 4 or it was called in japan this was another sequel that never made it out of japan and fun fact was the final officially licensed release for the famicom in 1994. these games are platformers best described as metroidvania style adventures with all sorts of power-ups and different worlds to explore you play as master takahashi and you have to save all your friends from the eggplant wizard makes perfect sense right i always loved reading about the adventure island games and nintendo power and they looked ridiculously fun but unfortunately i just never got a chance to spend any real time with them as a kid none of the rental stores in our area carried them and i didn't know anyone that had them and now there's a fourth one that i'm gonna have to get into that i didn't even know existed sheesh my video game backlog is really piling up someday i'm gonna have to go back and spend some more time with this series on this channel [Music] what about you did you get a chance to play these growing up and for that matter what are some long-lost sequels that i'm missing here let me know in the comments below so i can include them next time hey i do this sort of thing all the time on my channel if you enjoyed this feel free to leave a like as it does help and here's some other videos that you might enjoy you can also subscribe for new videos each week and if you haven't already done so make sure to click the bell notification on the front page because otherwise youtube has a funny habit of not letting you know when i've uploaded a new video hey thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] welcome back to friday night arcade my name is aaron and this week we're kicking off the october halloween season by taking a closer look at one of my favorite spooky titles for the nintendo entertainment system the uninvited it's a good old-fashioned haunted house tale and part of the mcventure series i've covered the mcventure series before on this channel so i won't go too much into it but this was a series of first-person point-and-click adventure games developed by icom simulations they were originally released on computers in the mid-80s and ported over to the nes in a slightly different order shortly thereafter the characters and stories of these games were unrelated but the gameplay was basically the same across the board [Music] let me explain how this works in case you've never played one of these before you control this cursor on the screen and it sorta acts like a mouse cursor you have a first person view of your surroundings in the upper left a mini map in the lower portion of the screen along with commands that you can choose to interact with the environment then you have your inventory section in the upper right you can move around in a non-linear fashion exploring the areas opening doors examining the areas and taking items finding and using keys or learning magical spells this is a much more chill nes gaming experience compared to the frantic button-mashing shoot-em-ups and platformers that you would most likely be accustomed to as a gamer at that time i always enjoyed the heck out of these mcventure games because it felt like you were getting a computer adventure gaming experience but on the home console it's just so different than the types of nes games you'd normally see the story here is you wake up after a car crash to find that your sister who was with you in the car has gone missing you get out of the car just before it explodes to find that you're in front of this foreboding old mansion you figure your sister must have gone inside for help so you set in after her to see where she went as you continue to explore the mansion a sense of dread sets in as you become increasingly aware of the fact that the only inhabitants of this place don't seem to be among the living most of the story is divulged through diaries that you find throughout the mansion which reveal horrific accounts from the former residents there's a totally original backstory about a mystical sorcerer who had an apprentice named draken who grew too powerful and started using magic for evil because that's just what apprentices do when they learn magic right along the way you'll also run into all sorts of terrors ghosts spiders flying tomato monsters zombies hellhounds bloated snakes little dancing monsters one-eyed bats some of the imagery is downright creepy for an nes game my favorite is the scarlett o'hara ghost which is also featured on the cover of the box she first appears in a hallway with her back turned to you she seems harmless enough but if you try to move past or talk to her oh god oh crap crap she murders you when you die and then you're dead you'll have to find a can of no ghost spray to dump on her in order to get past it's crazy to think how adult-themed this game was the description the game gives when the ghost kills you is grisly in detail you have gotten the attention of the mysterious lady she turns to face you her face is devoid of any flesh you are frozen with horror as she begins ripping you apart she laughs hysterically as your body slumps to the ground there's more like this too when you find the ghost of the butler that used to live in the mansion if you don't do just the right thing he slimes you and the slime is acid the screaming apparition's misty form engulfs you and you become covered in a thick sticky goo it's acid it doesn't take long for it to dissolve your body holy crap this would be a good time to mention that you die a lot in this game it's a good old-fashioned try it and die adventure game but with the save feature as well as a liberal continue option that just starts you a screen or two back it never gets annoying or over the top sometimes it's fun to just find more ways to die to see what kind of grotesque imagery the developers put in there check out this horde of zombies you stumble across in the maze especially when you see a close-up of their face there's also this weird cell where the inhabitant is just standing there in the computer version he's actually holding his own decapitated head but the big end had them tone down some of the violence a bit for the nes release still though it looks like he has blood on his hands and every time you die you're greeted with this creepy blood red skull which still somehow made it into the nes version there was a lot of text that got censored too for the nes release like some of the descriptions of the deaths which is crazy considering what made it in and they changed some of the religious overtones in the computer version you find a cross that you use in the final battle but on the nes it's replaced with a goblet which has holy water in it another thing the original address for the mansion was 666 blackwell road that got edited in the nes version but the envelope still reads that it was addressed to master crowley i'm not sure if nintendo just missed that reference or didn't put two and two together because that was most likely a reference to aleister crowley who's pretty much the founder of modern satanism remember the song mr crowley by ozzy osbourne i'll put a link in the description if you want to check out more of the side-by-side comparisons of what got edited out for the nes release i mentioned dying and that's where it gets to the crux of what these adventure games are all about trial and error on the one hand you could argue that uninvited is actually a bit easier than the other entries in the mcventure series it doesn't seem like there are nearly as many puzzles this time around compared to say shadowgate you could beat the game in 15 to 20 minutes if you know what you're doing however there is a bit of a reason for this in the computer version there was a time limit on the game as your character explored the mansion he'd start to grow more and more insane from the overwhelming evil presence that dwells there eventually becoming a zombie and joining the rest of the undead the nes removes the time limit for the most part although it does add in a devious red herring as you're exploring the mansion you find a mysterious blood ruby in one of the dresser drawers upstairs your natural inclination is to go ahead and grab it seems important enough and the key to success in just about every adventure game is to take any item the game mechanics allow you to pick up right well if you pick up the blood ruby then you start to go a little more insane after every turn and eventually die the evil presence proves too much for you you are united with the massive horde of undead that inhabit this estate you turn around to see your horrific new master a blood red skull smiling fiendishly at you your quest is over dang the thing is there's really no indication in the game that the ruby is the cause of the death timer if you just put the ruby down or don't pick it up at all there's no time limit and you're free to explore and find plenty of other ways to die on your own it's a dirty trick and i remember getting fooled by it plenty of times when i was a kid before finally figuring it out but how would you know furthermore this game more than any other game in the series has so much useless crap to pick up in the computer version you can only carry a total of 15 items however in this version you have unlimited carrying capacity and you're going to need it to carry the hall of over 60 obtainable items scattered throughout the mansion this whole place is like sifting through your grandparents boxes at a rummage sale spatulas pots and pans kitchen knives serving bowls jars flour ink blotter ink blotter what am i supposed to do with an ink blotter some of the puzzles make sense like if you search the couch at the front of the house the description tells you that it feels like there is something hard sewn into it use one of the kitchen knives to cut open the couch and you'll find a key that you can use to unlock several things around the mansion hey that seems logical but in other instances like with the butler ghost would you guess that you're supposed to find a can of pesticide use it on the ledge where you see the spider leave the room and come back in so the spider walks across the ledge where you sprayed and gets paralyzed pick up the paralyzed spider and then carry it to the butler's quarters and throw it at the butler ghost because he's terrified of spiders then you can get the diary out from behind the picture on the wall who would think to do that to my knowledge nowhere in this game does it give you any indication that this ghost is terrified of spiders at least in shadowgate or deja vu for the most part if you're patient and explore the areas carefully you can get through the game solely on in-game hints the developers sprinkled in there but that's all fairly minimal here with the uninvited i remember getting through this as a kid and i'm pretty sure i had to just go around using every item in the inventory until i figured out a solution just going around flinging spatulas and flowered ghosts until something happened but hey it's not all gloom and doom here's an adventure game tip from your old uncle aaron in most of these games there's a place where you can dispose of items that you're carrying in shadowgate you could throw items into the fountain at the back of the castle in deja vu you could throw items away in the sewers here in uninvited you can throw them in the backyard behind the mansion but here's the thing the developers are nice enough to throw up a red flag and have the game stop you if you try to throw away an item you actually need so just pick everything up walk out to the backyard and toss every item on the ground that the game will allow whatever you have left in your inventory afterward is crucial to your quest which should save you on some trial and error later on no wonder these ghosts were always trying to kill me i basically broke into their house cleaned out their pantry and threw everything in the yard probably looks like an estate sale threw up back there this game also has a sense of humor about it and it doesn't take itself too seriously for example when you're in the church you find a secret passage that goes to an underground tunnel if you try to go down the tunnel the game warns you not to go down there because there's a giant spider you really don't want to climb down there there's a spider down there that's bigger than a bread box no really that spider is bad news don't try to go down there of course you go down there and well what do you know it's a giant spider it crushes your tiny body in its large powerful jaws this game has a few fun callbacks to other entries in the mcventure series as well for example as you're exploring the maze you find a gravestone marked with the name ace harding that's the detective from deja vu also if you try to play the phonograph in the game room it briefly plays the main overture from shadowgate this game is still fun though at least to me it was cool to me just getting a computer gaming experience on a home console at the time we didn't have a computer who could afford one they cost as much as a car back then so this was the next best thing after i got my feet wet with shadowgate i bought these games every time they came out and i wish they would have made more of them as far as where uninvited ranks among the others in the mcventure series it's probably not my favorite shadowgate is still my go-to in this genre but that doesn't mean this entry is bad by any stretch like i mentioned before the lack of logical in-game clues for some of the puzzles is a bit of a detractor also i wasn't as big of a fan of the music this time around it does a good job of setting the spooky tone but it's not all that memorable i will also mention that the mansion isn't nearly as intriguing of a setting to me it's a cool concept but for the most part you're just exploring very normal looking rooms in this kind of boring house you're just creeping through some random dude's bedroom reading his diary and then ransacking his utility closet eventually you find a maze in some creepy caves but that's only a small percentage of the game i will say that it makes up for what the horrifying ghostly images and jump scares though also all of these kimco adventure games just kind of have a specific art style that i really enjoy they all kind of look the same and the look is kind of its own thing it's cool i like it [Music] i do have to comment on the ending of the game so there be spoilers ahead yar by the time you get to the end of the cave you find this shang tsung looking guy who tells you the rest of the backstory about drackett then you thought this big chunk of ice and it turns out draken was just frozen there the whole time his body floats down the caves and then you're just standing there with his sleeping body the solution is literally to just kick him into this pit in the middle of the room that's it no big epic final showdown or anything then you climb up a staircase and you're just instantly back in the mansion this time you can hear your sister screaming when you find her upstairs she's possessed by a demon and the solution is to just throw holy water on it boom that's it it just doesn't have the same grandeur or scale as the final battle with the behemoth and shadowgate and having to find and assemble all the pieces to the weapon before the big showdown i realize i'm nitpicking here don't get me wrong this is still a good game it just feels like kind of a letdown for a final battle overall though i still highly recommend checking out all of the nes versions of the mcventure series if you get the chance unfortunately uninvited is the most expensive of the bunch as it was released later in the nes lifespan and as such is a bit more rare a loose cartridge goes for somewhere between 40 and 50 bucks these games were ridiculously good fun and some of my all-time favorite childhood adventure gaming experiences what do you think did you play uninvited or any of the others in the mcventure series growing up what are some of your other favorite spooky titles on the nes i'd love to hear about your experience with this one hey i do this sort of thing all the time on my channel if you enjoyed this feel free to leave a like as it does help and here's some other videos that you might enjoy you can also subscribe for new videos each week and if you haven't already done so make sure to click the bell notification on the front page because otherwise youtube has a funny habit of not letting you know when i've uploaded a new video hey thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] well here's something you don't see every day a movie based nes game that doesn't absolutely stink gremlins 2 the new batch was released for the nintendo entertainment system in 1990 and loosely follows the events of the film the game was released by sunsoft so you know it's probably pretty good the movie actually lends itself to a video game fairly easily in the film the old man that owns gizmo passes away and gizmo ends up in a manhattan high-rise where there are the scientists that try to do experiments on him of course gizmo ends up getting water spilt on him and more evil mogui are born and eventually turn into gremlins but this time some of the gremlins end up getting extreme mutations vegetable gremlins a gremlin made of electricity hybrid bat gremlin this gave the developers something else to work with besides just having gizmo fighting a bunch of gremlins that all look the same you take control of gizmo and the gameplay consists of top-down action inside the manhattan high-rise with all sorts of enemies to deal with mines bats giant tomatoes and of course all sorts of gremlins with various abilities they also threw in tons of hazards like bottomless pits spikes moving platforms and lava who designed this building you eventually start to find weapons upgrades and you can find temporary help from items like the pogo stick the action is all smooth and the soundtrack is easily one of the best for the console they even went all ninja gaiden and added in some nifty cut scenes to flesh out the story they're a little on the short side but well done the levels are mostly linear but there are some branching pathways now and then and you'll want to explore as much as you can so that you can find the shops which look like these little doorways you go in to find the ghost of gizmo's previous owner with some various wearers to purchase and here is where it gets tricky you only get one chance to buy an item per level once you buy an item the store vanishes what item would you like to buy uh yes once gizmo buys an item the store disappears and you can't buy anything again until you find the shop in the next level lather rinse repeat the in-game currency consists of these crystals that look like orbs you find these all over the place by defeating enemies i found myself racking up tons of these but then you only get one chance to actually buy an item your options usually consist of a balloon an extra life a heart or occasionally a power canister the balloons are actually fairly helpful if you fall into a hole the balloon automatically picks you up and then you've got five seconds to float around and find a safe spot to land extra lives are self-explanatory and hearts not only refill your energy but they give you an extra heart container the power canister gives you a multi-shot power up that lets you shoot in three directions unfortunately the enemies never drop hearts but they drop plenty of crystals my issue with this is that the game's difficulty spikes pretty hard after you get through the first level these levels are typically cramped pathways with pits or spikes in all directions gizmo doesn't move super fast either but the enemies all spas out all over the place so often times it's simply not possible to get through an area without taking at least some damage [Music] then you've got these awkward jumps check this out what the sometimes it's easier to just fall into a pit on purpose and use a balloon to let all your troubles float beneath you there's also plenty of cheap line jumps where you can't really see what you're getting into then as soon as you make the jump there's an enemy there you can't avoid you don't replenish hearts between stages either my point is since the enemies never drop hearts you'll constantly be begging for a heart and by the time you stumble across one of these shops you may have to waste your chance on a heart rather than getting the all too important power canister but odds are you may want the power canister especially for the boss fights it's a dilemma that you'll constantly be dealing with as the challenge skyrockets in the later stages the game is fairly short but you'll probably have to repeat the levels at least a few times until you figure out the patterns and where everything is at so you can make it all the way through you may also want to master the first couple of levels so you can get the better power ups when you visit the shops luckily the game has a generous continue and password system making it simple to pick up where you left off it may seem like i'm complaining about the difficulty but really it's not a deal breaker just be ready for the challenge and it's worth trying because the graphics are quite stellar the color palette is a little repetitive and drab but they did an excellent job with the details on the enemies as well as the level interiors and the cut scenes the sprites are huge and everything just looks great and i mentioned the soundtrack before but it really is one of the best for any 8-bit system every track in this one is a winner not to mention controlling gizmo is a breeze the challenge is real but it's fair because the play control is responsive and easy to master it's up to you the player to just be better at the game the enemies don't respawn either so once you clear out an area you can catch your breath for a sec the boss fights are also very well done and although they are difficult in their own right not frustratingly so it just seems like they take a ton of damage so you'll have to really memorize the patterns and execute the plan to win the day your reward is the feeling of accomplishment and the next cutscene the game is on the cheaper end too and usually only goes for like 15 bucks maybe less a lot of times it gets overlooked since it's a movie game so if you see this one at a garage sale or flea market definitely grab it it's one of the better nes titles you'll find and certainly one of the best games ever based on a movie what do you think did you play this one growing up or discover it recently hey i do this sort of thing all the time on my channel if you enjoyed this feel free to leave a like as it does help and here's some other videos that you might enjoy you can also subscribe for new videos each week and if you haven't already done so make sure to click the bell notification on the front page because otherwise youtube has a funny habit of not letting you know when i've uploaded a new video hey thank you so much for watching please don't text the drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] little nemo the dream master was developed and published by capcom in 1990 and is one of my favorite gaming memories as a kid it's one of the few good games they actually had to run at the little gas station in the small town where i grew up on the surface it looks like a pretty straightforward side scroller but i feel like it's a situation of a game maybe being better than the sum of its parts and some people may not know this but the game was actually based on an animated movie called little nemo adventures in slumberland which was based on a comic strip from american cartoonist windsor mckay and released in the early 1900s anyway the opening cutscene tells the story of a young child named nemo who's sleeping soundly when he gets visited by a hot air balloon in the middle of the night and some weird pixie offers him candy to come visit slumberland and be the princess's playmate wait what okay so the story is a little strange but at least it has cut scenes it's kind of like ninja gaiden but for little kids so once you get to slumberland you take control of nemo and the controls are pretty basic walk jump duck but nemo has an infinite supply of candy that he can throw and this serves a couple of purposes first you can use it to stun most enemies making it easier to get around them and you can throw candy at certain animals you find along the way throw them three pieces of candy to get them hooked on it like drugs or something then take over their form which grants you different abilities depending on the animal the frog can jump higher and swim as well the mole can dig into the ground the bee can fly this is helpful because the baseline nemo character is actually pretty weak i mean after all he's a little kid he can't kill enemies by jumping on them like mario but if he's in the form of an animal he might be able to unless he's the mole which can't jump at all you can press select to switch back to basic nemo and you'll be constantly shifting forms throughout any stage which keeps things fresh and interesting usually at the beginning of a stage you'll run into a random character that gives you a little clue about what lies ahead the rest of the gameplay consists of exploring each non-linear level looking for enough keys to unlock all of the locks and open the door at the end to get to the next stage along the way you'll run into a wide variety of enemies such as spiked snails flying skull things snakes weird i don't even know what these things are it's all a dream though so it doesn't have to make any sense some areas can be a little annoying like in dream 2 an npc warns you you need to get a lizard to go through the next area and to look for him in the trees so you take control of donkey kong who can punch and climb but definitely can't swim and you have to climb up the trees to find the lizard the whole way you're climbing up the trees these little weird respawning balloon monsters keep attacking you and you have no way to counter except to try to get out of the way and hope for the best there's almost no way to do this without taking some damage and if you die it starts you over right under the tree so you actually have to backtrack to find and take control of donkey kong again since nemo can't climb also having to throw three pieces of candy at the animals to take control of them can be a little tedious especially if there are several enemies on the screen at once like here for instance i'm trying to take control of donkey kong and i can't even throw one piece of candy at him let alone three in the ark of the candy when nemo tosses it makes for some awkward throwing angles whether you're trying to take control of an animal or stun an enemy it's not awful or anything but you just have to get used to it this would be a good time to mention that there's also a fairly liberal continue feature but no password system so you'll have to find a level select code or play this from the beginning each time you want to try to beat the game [Music] stuff like that is all minor complaints though this game really is impressive and still fun to play today the graphics are all well done and it has all the level of detail you'd come to hope for from an 8-bit nes title the backgrounds of each level are also colorful and entertaining to look at and the dream storyline gave the creator's license to go crazy from oversized vegetation to water that's the wrong color to animated backgrounds to riding a train through a house of toys the art direction is just cool and no two levels are exactly alike the non-linear level design means you'll have to explore a bit and having to change forms from one animal to another is definitely a big part of the game there are certain areas you can only get to with a specific animal's abilities so it's not something you can ignore and that keeps you guessing although typically if there's an animal in a certain area odds are you need to change that animal and then there's the music it's a capcom game so would you expect anything less than greatness here junko tamiya put together a wonderful set list and she also did the soundtrack for bionic commando and gunsmoke the fun music combined with the colorful art direction really gives it an offbeat feel like you're exploring some warped dreamscape in the middle of the night there's also some fun boss fights toward the end and the final cutscenes make for a satisfying conclusion all of these simple elements combine to make a unique and entertaining side scroller on the nes and the best part is the game is cheap you can pick it up loose for 5 to 10 bucks and you could do a whole lot worse for that price well what did you think did you play a little nemo growing up have any of you heard of or seen the little nemo animated movie technically this game mechanic was used later in the kirby games what are some of your other favorite games like this as always thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] ninja gaiden 2 the dark sword of chaos was developed and released by tecmo in 1990 for the nintendo entertainment system it's part of the storied ninja gaiden trilogy of games at nes which are most known for their legendary cut scenes as well as punishing difficulty these games aren't for the faint of heart but they are absolutely worth your time if you're a fan of 8-bit platformers for me as a kid growing up ninja gaiden 2 was my introduction to the series and at the time i remember being completely awestruck by this game keep in mind that up to this point we've been playing mostly kitty platformers like mario and although i had rented castlevania a few times i had never seen anything quite like ninja gaiden the gameplay in the ninja gaiden series is quite similar to castlevania run to the right collect power-ups and special weapons and destroy anything that moves in castlevania you've got a whip in ninja gaiden you've got a sword you've got a life bar as well as ninja power which is basically ammo for your special weapons that you find along the way so yeah it's a lot like castlevania but the big difference here aside from the relentless difficulty is cut scenes at the start of the game as well as between each stage you get an animated cutscene fleshing out the game's story if you manage to get through a stage and defeat a boss you get to sit back and watch the next chapter unfold seeing these for the first time blew my mind as a kid and the story was fantastic too the first ninja gaiden tells the tale of a ninja warrior named ryu hayabusa who goes on a mission to avenge the death of his father and gets wrapped up in a plot that threatens the fate of the entire planet ninja gaiden 2 picks up about a year after the events of the first ninja gaiden with an enemy named ashtar who takes control of the dark sword of chaos and once again the fate of the world is at stake i don't want to spoil too much of the story but it features several twists and turns and it's just as much fun watching the events unfold as it is actually playing the game it features a colorful cast of characters including ryu as well as special ops agent robert this guy is kind of a badass and bails ryu out a couple times along the way then there's irene the classic damsel in distress that ryu has to rescue and then you've got some villains along the way such as ashtar and a few callbacks to the first game in the series the story was very adult too this definitely wasn't a kids show at one point robert fires a gun to shoot a boss that wasn't quite dead yet sneaking up behind ryu i mean sure there were games like contra where you go around shooting everything in sight but it was crazy to see him just pull out a gun and shoot someone in movie form later on he does the same thing against ashtar it doesn't work but i mean holy crap it's cool because he did the obvious thing and just try to shoot the bad guy rather than stand there monologuing for 20 minutes i feel like the story scenes are much tighter and more organized in this second ninja gaiden game than in the first one the first one was awesome don't get me wrong but i feel like some of the scenes run a little longer than they need to such as when ryu meets the cia agents and they explain the entire plot to him that scene goes on for like 20 minutes to quote total recall i don't want to spoil it for you but rest assured by the time ninja gaiden 2 is over you get the girl kill the bad guys and save the entire planet it's awesome and there's an actual game in between all these cut scenes too and it's a very well done hack and slash platformer running jumping and swinging your sword is all responsive and tactile while the game throws a variety of enemies at you one big difference between this and the first game is that ryu can climb up the side of just about any surface while in the first game ryu could catch himself on a wall but only climb up where there's a ladder that's super helpful in a pinch and i'm not sure why they ever thought to do it the other way this time around you also get way more special weapons the first game was a little stingy but this time you get all sorts of helpful power ups such as ninja throwing stars upward and downward firing projectiles as well as a fire wheel you also get rio clones which follow you around and mimic your attacks at times this almost makes you overpowered especially for certain boss fights but don't get too excited this game still has plenty of areas while you'll be throwing your controller in a fit of rage respawning enemies eagles that chase you and flames that just hover over you until you die are all a thing here [Music] there's a few awkward jumps and some diabolical enemy placement as well you just have to power through it and you've got unlimited continues as well as a slew of special weapons so that's really just the key making good use of your special weapons to some degree there are almost too many special weapons because just when you get a good one you accidentally grab one that shoots the wrong way and then you're kind of screwed on the boss fights and that's another thing even with ryu clones sometimes these boss fights are just ridiculous it can be done but to be honest we never could get all the way through to the end of this game as kids without the help of the game genie still i feel like the difficulty is more balanced here than in the first ninja gaiden and the extra power ups help however that's no help at all when you're up against the stage hazards this time around ninja gain 2 features stage hazards such as wind that changes directions and affects your jumping dark levels where you can only see the tiny platforms when the lightning flashes rushing waterfalls that push you all over the place as well as frozen lakes that leave you slip sliding away yeah you'll have to bring your a-game if you want to see the ending adding the stage hazards in with everything else makes for an at times brutal gaming experience but you can't help but applaud the creativity of the stage hazards and like i said before the play control is very tight it's up to you to just master all the tools at your disposal and be better at the game the awesome cutscenes make it worth your while and if you're interested in the ninja gaiden series at all the more balanced difficulty of ninja gaiden 2 makes it a great starting point what did you think did you play any of the ninja gaiden games growing up or only discover them recently which one did you play first and did you ever beat any of these games without using a game genie or some sort of cheat which one was your favorite as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] [Applause] [Music] journey to silius or rough world as it was known in japan was developed and released by sunsoft in 1990 for the nintendo entertainment system sunsoft was known for some pretty great nes titles such as batman blaster master and gremlins 2 the new batch so it shouldn't be any surprise that journey decilius is also a very entertaining game that's worthy of some attention i'll confess i'm going into this one blind today as this game passed me by growing up this title was originally being developed as an 8-bit adaption of the 1984 james cameron classic film the terminator and was even briefly mentioned in an issue of nintendo power however somewhere along the way in the development process sunsoft lost the license to use the terminator but they liked the game so much they swapped out a few skins and finished it anyway [Music] what we're left with is an interesting little side-scrolling shooter set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where three and a half floppy disks are still a thing you play as a character simply named jay who decides to avenge the death of his father by taking on terrorists who have overrun the world and all of the terrorists or bloodthirsty machines held in on wiping out mankind totally not at all like the terminator what stands out to me most about journey to sileus is first and foremost the music even if you're not crazy about the game it's got one of the best top to bottom soundtracks of any 8-bit game ever there's not a bad tune on the cartridge and it even keeps playing when you pause the game [Music] i also love the backgrounds and overall art direction of this game the levels are all fantastic just to look at with crisp scenery that puts you right into the futuristic setting from burned out cityscapes to technological interiors that remind me of the death star it all just looks good and the character sprites are all richly detailed most of the enemies are all machines with pretty similar color schemes but the level of detail is impressive it's not hard to imagine that at one point this was all set in the futuristic wasteland of the terminator and your character probably would have been kyle reese mowing down hordes of cybernetic killing machines not just the t800 but several of the other robots look pretty familiar as well there even seem to be a few nods to the alien franchise the gameplay is pretty straightforward run to the right and kill anything that moves each level has a mini boss near the end before you get to the final boss the mini bosses drop a special weapon that you can add to your arsenal and the game employs a weapon select system similar to mega man where you can pick and choose which weapons you want to use for a given situation your main weapon has unlimited ammo but you can run out of ammo for your specials there are mild difficulty swings between being pretty easy to be downright infuriating it's one of those games with sections where you can't help but take at least some damage the enemies do drop power ups such as refills for your special weapons but i think they only dropped health like maybe five times throughout the entire game when i was recording this footage i'm not even kidding and the health drops only seem to refill like two pegs on your life bar ah come on seriously the levels are kinda long too definitely longer than average so often times by the end you're begging for a health drop your health bar doesn't refill between the mini bosses and the big boss at the end of each stage either so that's that's a thing it's a short game and can be beaten in under an hour if you know what you're doing but it may take you longer than that and the frustrating difficulty spikes may be a turn off for some players here's a tip if you push the b button exactly 33 times on the title screen then push start you can access a special menu with a sound test and you can add up to nine continues my platoon sergeant used to say if you ain't cheating you ain't trying i mean it though this game is hard and not always in that fun challenging ninja gaiden kind of way there are certain areas with blind jumps or awkward jumps and the play control isn't always spot on like here for instance these little cannons pop out of the ground and you have to jump through this corridor just right to avoid damage then they threw another one on the ledge below for good measure the oversized bosses are super cool to look at but they can be frustrating as well since it may take you several tries before you figure out the sweet spot where you can inflict damage without taking too much yourself which could just mean you'll have to replay the stages a bunch of times still though this game is fun it's definitely not one of the greatest nes games of all time but the incredible soundtrack and well-visualized futuristic art direction makes for an atmospheric 2d shooter that's more addicting than it deserves to be the opening cut scene draws you in it's especially satisfying just running around blowing stuff up and finding special weapons along the way makes it feel like you're accomplishing something the destruction of a final boss is an earth-shattering ordeal and the final stage is on rails pulling you through a labrinthian factory which i would venture to guess would have been the terminator assembly line had sunsoft not lost the license if you can make it to the end to defeat the final final boss you're greeted with a sweet final cut scene as well as a nice outro tune rewarding you for a job well done [Music] not bad kid this game is a bit more on the rare side and unfortunately goes for about 25 bucks or more as a loose cartridge if you find it for cheaper than that at a flea market or garage sale definitely grab it but i'm not sure i could recommend going out of your way to track it down and paying full price for it otherwise since it's so short what do you think did you play journey to silliest growing up or like me only discover it recently what are some other games similar to this you enjoyed as a kid as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade simcity was one of my all-time favorite games and i must have rented the super nintendo version too many times to count but did you know that there was a version and development that was originally planned to be released for the 8-bit nintendo entertainment system find out all about it going from the game's planned development and cancellation to being thought to be lost forever before two working prototypes of the game surfaced at a seattle-based retro gaming store in august of 2017. its simcity on the nes on this edition of friday night arcade [Music] simcity got its roots on the commodore 64. it started out as an idea by programmer will wright who came up with the concept when he was working on another game a helicopter simulator called raid on bungling bay bungling bay was published in 1984 by broader bound and eventually made its way onto the nes as well wright said he came up with the idea while he was using the map editor tool for bunkling bay and notes that he had more fun editing the map and creating cities than he did actually flying the helicopter around and frankly after playing bungling bay a bit that's not hard to imagine anyway that idea eventually morphed into what we now know as sim city a complex city building simulator that combines map building creativity with complex system dynamics such as population density traffic crime and industrial and commercial zones the first version of simcity under the working title micropolis was originally developed for the commodore 64 in 1985. however broadband initially didn't think a simulation game like this would sell and ultimately the game wouldn't be published right away wright spent a considerable amount of time just trying to get his city simulation game off the ground but no publishers were interested no game publisher believed that a simulation game like this would be marketable or fun to play for a casual audience in the summer of 1986 will wright met jeff braun at what would later be dubbed the world's most important pizza party ron already had a wireframe jet simulation game of his own that he was trying to get off the ground so the two agreed to team up and form their own game publishing company they called it max's when wright went back to brother brown to clear the rights to sell and publish his city simulator game executives at broader bound were reconsidered after seeing in an action they realized the gameplay that while slow paced was infectious and genuinely fun to play they urged wright to reconsider publishing the game through broader bound wright agreed to do so as long as fellow max's founder jeff braun's jet simulation game would also be part of the deal broader bound agreed and that's how it came to be that simcity was officially released on amiga macintosh and ibm pc platforms as well as commodore 64 in 1989 sales were a little slow at first but word of mouth eventually led to the game having sold over a million copies by 1992 with the success of the game maxis and will wright were contacted by another successful gaming company about negotiating the rights to their city building simulation that company was nintendo in the summer of 1990 shigeru miyamoto personally flew to california to meet up with will wright and the max's team miyamoto the creator of one of the most successful games at that time in super mario bros 3 and will wright the creator of one of the most popular computer games at that time simcity eventually came to a deal to distribute wright's creation on nintendo hardware the official figure was never made public but it was believed that nintendo paid maxis over one million dollars for the rights to publish simcity on nintendo consoles miyamoto added his own flair to the project by working on a control scheme to help keep simcity fun and enjoyable to play on a home console when it was normally being played with a keyboard and mouse he also added a digital advisor dr wright aptly named after the game's creator to help guide new players through the potentially arduous process of city planning and he added in a bank loan feature to help make the game more enjoyable in the early stages simcity would eventually be released on the super nintendo entertainment system in 1991 and this is the version most us console gamers from that era probably have the fondest memories of myself included however where the story gets really intriguing is that before the snes version was released it was originally being developed for the 8-bit nintendo entertainment system what would an nes version of a complex simulation game like simcity have looked like [Music] in a late 1990 issue of nintendo power sim city for the nintendo entertainment system was featured in the upcoming games section and there was even promise of a spring 1991 release the article actually displayed a couple of screenshots from the game as well showing a very 8-bit looking menu and graphic system i remember seeing this article as a kid and thinking the idea of a city simulator on the nes sounded fascinating a playable prototype of nes sim city was later featured at the 1991 winter consumer electronics show there's even footage of the prototype in action in an episode of video power you remember video power don't you hosted by this johnny arcade guy that's video power today we're gonna peer into the future of my little gray two tones buddy here the nes we went to the consumer electronics show last week and tweaked some of the hottest new chips in the biz hey anyway here you can plainly see simcity on the nes in action city you've probably heard of this game it was very popular on the pc so what did nintendo do they grabbed it and made it one of their own you know i'm gonna check it out right now in this game you design build and maintain your own dream city you're sort of a combination between the mayor and the king you make all the decisions you build the highways factories and homes figure out the zoning and set and collect the taxes from your citizens as your city gets bigger so do its problems you have to figure out how to deal with the gridlock traffic and battle pollution litter and crime look for this one to hit the shelves in may of 1991. although the super nintendo version was eventually released and went on to be very successful the nes version was quietly cancelled and just sort of vanished into thin air it wasn't even mentioned publicly again in any official capacity until the managing editor of nintendo power scott pelland noted in a 2006 interview in the magazine that he had a gold prototype of the game that was pretty far along in development sitting on his desk so there was some more proof that this game actually existed somewhere but where is the prototype now we wouldn't hear about the nes version of the game again for another 15 years in august of 2017 someone going by the online name of big daddy ramirez reported that he had just discovered not one but two working prototype cartridges of sim city for the nintendo entertainment system big daddy ramirez is the owner of a seattle-based retro gaming theme store called back in time gaming and a video showing the game in action was uploaded to youtube later that month prototype cartridges such as this especially ones that were developed internally by nintendo tend to go for insane prices on auction these two prototypes were auctioned off at the portland retro game expo and one of them was won by a private collector it's not uncommon for these types of prototypes to be won and then just locked away forever and it was looking like simcity on the nes may vanish into history for a lengthy period of time once again depending on who would win this last working prototype the last prototype was snatched up by steve lin thankfully steve agreed to dump a copy of the rom from the prototype cartridge and make it available to be preserved and examined by the video game history foundation's frank sifaldi frank and his team at vghf spent a considerable amount of time examining the rom ripping it apart by the source code and just figuring out how this thing worked and what it looked like eventually the rom was made available in a special archive pack on the video game history foundation website which you can download and try for yourself via emulation right now there's several links in the description if you're interested in this project along with the playable rom the downloadable archive includes mp3s for all of the music tracks in the game promotional materials and a look at the game's raw source code also definitely check out the video game history foundation's official website and behold the wonderful work that they're doing hey thanks for all your hard work guys [Music] so here it is after nearly 30 years here's sim city on the nintendo entertainment system right away the title screen is a sight to behold it's not often you get to see something that feels like new for a gaming console that's over 30 years old i also have to add that the music is impressive the game featured an all-new soundtrack composed by soyo oka who was also responsible for the soundtracks on pilotwings super mario kart and super mario all-stars this soundtrack hits all those wonderful 8-bit chiptune feels and would have been perfect for frittering hours away tinkering with whatever complex city your imagination could come up with simcity on the nes plays pretty much exactly like its 16-bit big brother with map selection practice mode create your own city or you can choose from a scenario the scenarios are actually all exactly the same from the snes version the menu interface is pretty much exactly the same as well you can pick and choose what you want to build and move your cursor around with the d-pad there's a plethora of information at your disposal such as budgetary considerations population and crime maps and so forth the 8-bit sprites for all the little buildings look well awesome from hospitals to police stations power plants and stadiums it's crazy seeing 8-bit versions of everything when their 16-bit counterparts are seared into my brain forever pretty much all of the options from the snes version are available here and it's incredible to think that this would have ran on an nes console and to that end well after spending some time with this it's perhaps kind of obvious to see why the nes version got shelved with all these complex calculations running in the background it doesn't take long for the game to start to chug a bit as your city grows in size i'm not really sure how playable this thing would have been over the long haul now to be fair this is most definitely an unfinished version of the game it's not really clear if nintendo mixed it because they realized it just wouldn't run that well on the nes or if they just wanted to give people more incentive to buy a super nintendo instead we may never really know for sure if with some more polishing this could have run smoothly on 8-bit hardware or not as it stands the game has some wonky bugs and issues for example it seems like it takes forever just to get power running to some of my zones even after a reasonable amount of time has passed since building the power lines and for some reason nobody wanted to move into my boring little grid town not sure if the game was just being glitchy or if i was doing something wrong but my mostly vacant city was flat broke within a few years and well it was fun ripping it to shreds with any of the six disasters you have to choose from the same options you're used to seeing are there earthquakes floods tornadoes even the monster although this time it's not bowser making a cameo and instead it's just a generic godzilla type monster the scenarios were fun to mess with too but even that was a little off the godzilla scenario in tokyo just kind of came and went with a few little fires to deal with no big deal at some point after godzilla left the game told me there had been an air crash disaster but when i went to it i couldn't seem to find anything that had actually happened and in the scenarios with these massive cities you can see that the game is really working hard to keep up seemed like several of these residential zones weren't even populated which is weird considering this was a pre-made scenario [Music] so while it's super cool to see this 8-bit concept of simcity in action i feel like it's safe to say you can stick with the super nintendo version or whichever iteration you're used to for me at least simcity on the super nintendo is still the definitive version just the way the graphics and everything looked the little cameos from nintendo characters and that version in general is my favorite version of sim city before it got just way too complex newer versions of the game like simcity 3000 or simcity 4 go off the deep end with excessive details to manage hey look i just want to build roads zones and power lines and watch my city grow i don't have to mess with routing sewer and water lines that's silly this version struck just the right balance of simulation and fun and again it's just well really cool to see it in 8-bit form well what do you think did you have a chance to try this out after it got released by the video game history foundation did you play the super nintendo version at all as always thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade the nintendo entertainment system for all its 8-bit glory is mostly known for action games platformers beat-em-ups and shooters meanwhile computer games of the time usually offered something of a different breed of gaming with strategy games or point-and-click adventure unfortunately you probably would have had to sell your car to buy a computer capable of running these things back in the 80s but did you know there were numerous computer games that eventually made their way onto the nes home console as well some of these worked pretty well and some not so much nevertheless it's interesting to see what some of the developers came up with to try to bring a passable computer gaming experience to the home console market with fairly limited hardware capabilities let's take a closer look at some computer games on the nes on this edition of friday night arcade [Music] well you can't get much more computer gaming than this it's king's quest 5 on the nes a king's quest game you can play right on your nintendo wow so i really had no idea this even existed until a few years ago i don't remember seeing it for sale anywhere seeing the sierra logo on an nes game would have made my head explode as kid as i was used to space quest 3 at the time right up front the game asks you if you've ever played king's quest before if you say yes it takes you right into the game whereas if you say no you get a lengthy cutscene king graham is out for a walk when an evil wizard makes his castle disappear then cedric the talking al turns you into a pancake and you fly away together at this point sierra adventure games had moved on to a point-and-click interface rather than text parser and that actually translates decently to the nes pressing the b button brings up a menu screen with a few actions to choose from as well as your inventory and you can use that to investigate and interact with objects in your environment unfortunately the graphics are just yuck it's really difficult to see what any items are making puzzles unnecessarily difficult to solve not to mention the music is like nails on chalkboard i honestly can't see any reason to play this now and i'm not even sure that i would have had the patience to try to get through this as a kid well here's something you don't see every day the immortal was originally released on the apple 2gs and eventually made its way onto the amiga atari st and das formats you take control of a wizard tasked with rescuing another wizard somewhere down in the hellish labyrinth below it's an isometric adventure game that's certainly intriguing on the surface it looks and smells an awful lot like diablo which sounds like a potentially fascinating nes experience unfortunately the nes just isn't able to keep up with this to make it much fun there's stuff flying all over the place trying to kill you as well as random trap doors you'd have to sit down with a notepad and make a map of where all the traps are just to make it through you can cast fireballs while you're in the regular iso view and that's helpful for taking out these annoying bats to keep following you around but occasionally you run into monsters as well when you fight these it goes into a special battle view and you're gonna need the manual to figure this out if you hold down either of the arrow keys and press b you can do an attack with your staff if you press a you can duck the green bars indicate your energy while the red bars steadily rising indicate your fatigue factor wear yourself out and you won't be able to attack but the monsters can wear themselves out too so the book recommends ducking as often as you can to tire out the monsters and then attack them but it seemed like no matter how often i ducked they just kept doing damage to me anyway so the only way i could really seem to make any progress was to just beat him senseless [Music] i couldn't really seem to get through these battles without taking at least some damage you don't get many hit points to start with and health power-ups seem to be non-existent maybe if i spent a little more time with it i'd get better but i take too much damage in these monster battles and then get taken out by something cheap like a bat trap door or any one of the flurry of projectiles filling up the screen at any given second the menus are kind of awkward too for instance when you open up a treasure chest rather than just showing me everything in the chest all at once and letting me rummage through it final fantasy style it goes through them one at a time and you have to decide whether or not you want to take it so maybe this one was better left on computer or maybe i'm missing something here what do you think did you ever play this on either a computer or the nes it's a shame too because i think the graphics are really neat and detailed you've got some pretty great sound effects and the music is top notch some of the best on the system [Music] what in the world is this okay if you've never heard of elite before it's one of the most highly regarded space trading games of all time programmed by ian bell and david braven this game raised the bar for what an open-ended space game could be in 1984 and they ported it to as many computer formats as they could but wait what the hell is it doing on the nes that's right you could play an open world space simulator right on your 8-bit nintendo entertainment system if you lived in europe so unfortunately this thing was pal only and after spending some time with it i can sort of understand that decision but it's still too bad the developers clearly thought this would be too deep for an american audience used to pick up and play titles like super mario bros with a wealth of intricate menus and options to choose from you're absolutely going to need to brush up on the dense manual included with the game players take control of a spaceship and you can make repairs stock up on supplies warp to other locations trade take up mining embark on military missions all while avoiding pirates or you can be a pirate yourself whatever you want the nes certainly wasn't capable of 3d but they pulled off some serious fakery here with these wireframe graphics and this is impressive to see in action especially on an 8-bit machine there's some great music tracks here too surprisingly the menus aren't that complicated to manage while you're in spaceflight either holding down the b button takes control of this cursor on your dashboard and you can pick from a variety of options on the fly it's all quite seamless but like i said there's no way you can just pick this one up and play it and you'll definitely need the manual to know what any of these options are for this looks just awesome and i'm gonna need some more time to wrap my head around this one properly [Music] okay time to blow through some other computer games on the nes that i've already covered extensively in previous videos on the channel first up is the mcventure series from icom simulations these point-and-click adventure games were originally available in various computer formats in the mid-80s before eventually being ported to the nes and published by kimco the three we got on the nes were shadowgate deja vu and the uninvited the playstyle in each of these was all the same although the stories were unrelated shadowgate sent you on an epic adventure into a castle to stop an evil warlock deja vu placed you in the role of a grizzled detective with amnesia who's been framed for murder and the uninvited sent you into the depths of a twisted haunted house in search of your sister who's gone missing after a car accident all of these games were ridiculously fun if you're into point-and-click adventure and are definitely worth your time if you want to know more about them you can check out my previous individual videos i made for each of them in the past [Music] and this one i just talked about recently but it's worth mentioning again that simcity was nearly released on the nintendo entertainment system after simcity became one of the most successful computer games ever shigeru miyamoto met up with the creator of simcity will wright to discuss releasing it on nintendo hardware a deal was struck and sim city was featured in nintendo power as getting an nes release as well as featured at the 1991 consumer electronics show however it got cancelled and the super nes version was released instead still though it's neat to think that simcity could have ran on 8-bit hardware even if it was a little slow and wonky a couple of working prototypes turned up recently at a retro gaming store in seattle and thankfully the video game history foundation was able to dump a rom from one of them for preservation and analysis this rom is freely available on the video game history foundation's website if you want to check it out for yourself i did a whole video about the backstory behind simcity on the nes a few weeks ago if you're interested in finding out more about it [Music] last up sid meier's pirates the name sid meier is synonymous with enjoyable simulation games and pirates is no exception you take control of a group of pirates and you can just go around being pirates this is one of those games i remember reading about nintendo power as a kid but just never got a chance to actually buy it and never saw it anywhere for rent there's a backstory here about how your character came out of poverty to join a ragtag group of pirates with promise of fortunes and loot you can sail around picking fights with the french or dock and visit the local towns for news and missions as well as stock up on supplies the game nudges you in a certain direction but it's really up to you where you want to go and this is truly an open world experience something you didn't see much on an nes game my only complaint is that when you're on land your characters move slow as molasses so just try to dock as close to the towns as you can there's plenty to do in this game though so if you're patient enough to learn i think this would be an absolute blast to play i wish i would have got a chance to play it as a kid [Music] there are still a lot more computer games on the nes to cover but we'll get to those another time what did you think did you play any of these computer games on the nes growing up what were some other computer games you would have liked to have seen ported to the nes at some point as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] kabuki quantum fighter is one of those games that i remember reading about in my very first issue of nintendo power and thinking that it looked cool but i just never saw it anywhere to rent and never got a chance to try it for myself well here we are nearly 30 years later and i'm finally getting around to playing it for the first time the story goes that in the year 2056 a computer virus has taken over earth's defense system and could cause global annihilation the fate of the planet rests with one man colonel scott o'connor who's willing to undergo a dangerous procedure to convert his brain waves to raw data and jack into earth's defense grid matrix style to stop the virus the technology is experimental and no one knows what effects the transfer will have on his brain waves or psyche but colonel o'connor is well trained in body and spirits so it should be okay the gameplay consists of side scrolling action where you take control of colonel o'connor inside the super computer once inside the machine you can attack enemies with your hair for some reason okay so the original famicom version was technically based off the 1990 japanese film the legend of jipong in that version the man transforms into a samurai ancestor when he enters the computer but those references were removed for the international release of the game anyway you can jump swing your hair as well as pick up special weapons to use throughout 6 stages inside the computer you don't really find the weapons the game just kind of gives them to you after each stage and you get ammo for them by finding computer chips along the way [Music] so on the surface this game looks pretty cool the graphics are colorful and very well detailed and some of the music is definitely on the upper end of the spectrum as far as nes soundtracks go there's plenty of cool weapons to find along the way and the storyline is certainly intriguing however i can't help but overlook the fact that it's really just a poor man's version of ninja gaiden 2 the dark sword of chaos some of these stages look practically the same and with the stage hazards it's even more obvious why would there be beating hearts and rushing water in a computer mainframe anyway these levels are also kind of short but set up just awkwardly enough to require multiple playthroughs to figure out how to navigate your way through i mentioned the stage hazards and there are plenty of them rushing water ice blocks spikes rotating platforms like giant lag screws platforms to hang off of platforms with conveyor belts on the top of them for some stupid reason and enemies put in just the right spot to make the game completely unfair they also like to put some of these platforms barely out of your character's max jumping range although the levels are very well detailed from a graphical standpoint this presents a different challenge because it's not always clear where your character can or can't jump is this a platform that i can walk on or is it just in the background who knows and you won't find out until you try to jump on it and fall in the water same goes with enemies there's some neat animated things going on in the background sometimes they just look cool other times they do damage some of these jumps are precarious and when you're hanging off a platform like this it can be tricky and borderline frustrating getting your character to swing just right to catch the next platform then they usually throw an enemy in there just off screen for good measure there's hardly ever a way to make it through without at least taking some damage [Music] also the hair attack is cool and has a nice attack radius similar to simon belmont's whip or reused sword but it only works if you're standing if you duck you just do a weak little punch that barely has any reach unfortunately a lot of times the enemy placement begs for a better crouching attack and instead you're stuck dealing with this then there's the boss fights thankfully they're nice enough to refill your life bar right before the boss fights at the end of each stage but these bosses just sort of spaz all over the place with these bosses it's just brute force offense and hope you do enough damage to outlast your opponent there's no real discernible pattern here the special weapons aren't all that helpful either then when you do beat a boss you get a cut scene and then onward to the next level but this time they don't bother refilling your life bar at all deal with that kabuki so okay it sounds like i'm being pretty harsh on this game it's not all that bad and i actually really like the futuristic storyline and the idea of downloading your entire brain into a computer to fight off viruses that's some next level science fiction horror stuff and probably even a little ahead of its time for 1990. the hair attack is certainly unique and most of the music in this game is top notch but i'll just say buyer beware some of the platforming areas in this game may make even the most patient of gamers throw their controller in frustration thankfully this game isn't super expensive it only seems to go for about 15 bucks or so on the open market i definitely wouldn't pay any more for it than that though well what did you think did you play this one at all growing up or maybe discover it recently as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] hello and welcome to friday night arcade my name is aaron and today we're gonna be taking a look at the nes advantage controller this was pretty much my favorite peripheral for the nintendo entertainment system and allowed you to have arcade action right at home replacing the standard nes rectangle controller with an arcade style joystick and over-sized buttons for pure button-mashing goodness it's also hard to look at one of these and not think about that scene in ghostbusters 2 when the ghostbusters use one along with a sony walkman to take control of the statue of liberty and drive it around new york city and recently someone also made me aware that christina aguilera used this controller in one of her music videos and well nothing was right about that at all anyway right now i have two of these bad boys one that's still normal color and in pretty good shape and another that's yellowed and beat up pretty bad on this episode we're going to take a brief overview of the controller and how it worked and we're also going to see if we can restore my older beat up yellow controller and then at the end we'll test out some games and see how it holds up the nes advantage made its first public appearance at the 1987 consumer electronics show and featured a massive metal base that gave it a very weighty well-built feel it had a retail price of 49.95 out the door and nowadays you can usually find one for about 20 or 30 bucks depending on where you look the major selling point of the controller at the time was not just the arcade joystick and buttons but two new features a turbo button functionality as well as a slow motion feature looking at the packaging experience the professional feel of real arcade play repeating firepower at the touch of a button delay the action with exclusive slow motion control bring the professional feel of a real arcade joystick out of the arcades and into your living room with the nes advantage the action never stops just a touch of a button and you'll have adjustable repeat firing at your fingertips and when the action gets too fast you can slow it down with the exclusive slow motion control that allows you to plan your next move it also has a real arcade joystick see it says so right on the box these two kids look excited okay so the turbo feature worked like this you've got your traditional b a buttons laid out similar to the original controller but then you've got these adjustment dials above each button you can engage the turbo by toggling the gray switch button above either a or b respectively engaging the turbo simulates the player rapidly pressing the button but all you have to do in reality is just hold the button down once you hold down the button the turbo goes to work and you can just let go of the button whenever you don't need it this feature especially comes in handy on space shooters where it doesn't already have rapid fire in place by just holding down the button and you would have had to sit there wailing away and wearing out your thumb in the process if you choose to engage the turbo you can also adjust how fast the turbo is working by using these special dials all the way to the left is as slow as it gets while adjusting it all the way to the right speeds it up they even put a special light on there that would flash according to how fast the button was working which was totally unnecessary but looked really cool having these turbo adjustment dials was a really helpful feature that lets you fine tune the turbo functionality to whatever game you're playing since every game is going to be a little different over on the right side you've got the start and select buttons as well as this slow motion feature okay so here's how this worked basically when you engage the slow motion it treats the start button as if you've got the turbo feature dialed in but instead of rapidly pressing the a or b buttons you're rapidly pressing the start button which in most cases this pauses the game so the theory here is that if you're rapidly pausing and unpausing the game the game will run slower thus giving you a slow motion effect this technically worked but was hit or miss depending on the game you're playing and we'll talk more about that later you've also got a switch for toggling between player 1 and player 2 with a 50 price tag nintendo was smart enough to recognize most households were only going to have one of these things if any so the way this worked is the advantage actually has two connectors at the end of the wire plug both of these into your player 1 and player 2 controller ports on the console and then you can flip the switch whenever you need to take turns between two players if you were fortunate enough to have two of these and wanted to play a two player co-op game you'd have to flip one controller to player one and the other to player two then plug in the corresponding connectors so both controllers could work at the same time overall just looking at this controller though there's really nothing to complain about this thing is just awesome i once heard it described as god's own controller unlike its successor the super advantage for the snes that i looked at a while back this was actually manufactured in-house by nintendo and the workmanship really shows this thing has solid weight to it and feels like you could toss it down the steps and it would still go the buttons are tactile and feel like they could hold up to even the most extreme button mash in our cage session traditionalists will note that these buttons use rubber switches and not the usual arcade micro switches but they're probably as good as you could have hoped for at the time the dials are not loose at all and the joystick feels like an arcade joystick this controller is also a beast literally this thing is huge it's practically the size of the nes console it has a nice long cable so you don't have to sit too close to the screen although it wasn't really meant to sit on your lap either in an ideal setting you'd have a tv tray or something sturdy to set this on in front of you and play it similar to how you'd play when you're standing in an arcade cabinet and the rubber feet along with the weight of this thing makes sure it won't skid around across the surface of whatever it's sitting on so once you're locked in you're good to go okay now let's see if we can get this kind of yellowed nes advantage that's beat up a little bit we're going to take this apart and see if we can fix this up we'll see if we can get this plastic brightened up a little bit too on the back there's just six screws i did have to pop off these little rubber non-skid pads to get to some of to get to four of the screws you can see they're actually pretty gross so i'm going to have to do a little cleaning i'll glue those back on later but in the interest of time i'm just worried about getting this apart also i noticed this metal plate is actually rusted a little bit and so i may i may take some steel wool to this uh i don't want to damage the sticker but at the same time i'd like to get some of this rust off so um i'll do a little work on that as well we'll see we'll see how much time we have let's see what kind of shape this is in when we get it apart first [Music] okay now that we've got all of the screws off we will take off this top plate and it looks like everything is just connected to the plastic so looks like we've got five or six more screws to take off so what we want to do is we want to get underneath these switches and see if we can kind of clean this out a little bit so if we can clean out the rubber dome underneath this we can maybe get a little bit better connection and we can see if we can clean this off too and get a little bit better connection as well and then also once we get everything disconnected from this we can uh take this plastic piece separately and uh use a retrobriting technique on it to see if we can brighten up that plastic a little bit as well so we'll get started on that and see where we end up okay this last group this last screw has this little uh kind of metal clasp that goes here in the corner i don't really know what that does but i'm going to try to keep it not i'm trying i'm going to try to keep it together so that it doesn't uh when we go to put this back together i can put it back on uh i have no idea why it exists but whatever also it looks like there's uh dog hair in here i don't know what the hell how that how that could have possibly happened uh they took it apart long enough to put uh to let their dog rub their nose in it but then they didn't actually bother to clean it so whatever all right you never know what you're gonna find when you take apart one of these old things uh there's this is kind of a 35-year time capsule of next thing i'm going to do is i'm going to try to just kind of gently pop this wire out of here there we go and then this all theoretically if i got all the screws out this should just come out okay so i actually forgot one crucial step uh i forgot to take these uh turbo adjustment dials off so the way these come off is uh you'll want to take their it's a two-step process you're going to take a set of pliers or something like this and uh what you'll want to do is uh turn them all the way to the left so that they're lined up with the little arrow on the plastic and then since these kind of have a little bit of a serrated edge to them uh if you don't want to damage these what you might want to do is just take like a kind of a thick rag and maybe just wrap it around like this and then you're going to want to pull straight up if you can and then it just comes off like so and just repeat the same thing on the other side and then the second step to getting uh to dealing with these uh adjustment dials is you're actually going to need a a 10 millimeter socket and if you can see down in there there is a 10 millimeter washer and nut so we just have to take that out and i completely screwed that up so if you're following along at home you should have done that first otherwise you're gonna end up with a big jumble of buttons like this and since we've already got everything apart anyway we can go ahead and take apart uh the board that comes underneath the joystick and uh taking this apart already oof that is uh absolutely disgusting so um so yeah what we're looking for is uh we're gonna try to clean that off as best as we can see these little pads these little connector pads there uh already you can see my finger making a mark in the dust and cook and then the joystick comes out like so and then looking at the board you can see uh the places where the buttons actually connect it's these little gold foil connector plates here and here these are the probably gonna be the main ones we're concerned about since that's going to be your b and a buttons and then also we're going to want to clean off all of these little rubber domes that go underneath the buttons so we'll try to get those cleaned off as best as we can as well i'm not sure how well you can see that but there's just that is just disgusting so uh we're gonna clean that as best we can and uh and then we'll go from there and while we've got this connector plate off what we're going to do is uh we're going to do a little bit of a retro brightening technique on that you can already see if you look down uh down in in the hole where the dials went you can see what the plastic used to look like same thing on the back side this is uh this is much brighter on the backside than it is on the front side you can tell all the areas that were that were exposed so what we're going to do is we're going to submerge this in hydrogen peroxide and then expose it to uh to uv light we're actually just going to set it outside uh in a pan and we'll see after it sits outside for a while if that yeah and i'm going to try to clean this off before i even do that so let me get some windex first and see if i can clean this off [Music] all right now that i've got uh most of the surface dust off of this cover piece i'm gonna get this soaking in some retrobrite and get it set outside there's still a few hours of daylight left so hopefully we'll be able to get this finished up by the end of the day okay now i'm gonna take some isopropyl alcohol and see if i can clean this board up and all these little rubber contact pieces as best as i can [Music] consider this a friendly reminder from friday night arcade to always clean your ball okay so i rinsed all these little plastic pieces off just in the kitchen sink to see if i could get all the dirt off of these and basically anything with the rubber dome or the rubber pieces that go underneath the buttons i hit these with isopropyl alcohol as as best i could to try to get as much of the dirt off there as i could and as for the rubber feet there is there is just not much to be done with these they are in pretty bad shape so i may just see if i can find uh some new ones similar to this that i could order offline and then just replace them it looks like at one point they maybe tried to use electrical tape on some of these and that just made more residue and more uh funk so i don't know about those looking at this metal plate this does have a lot of rust on it so what i'm going to do is uh i'm going to try a little bit of steel wool and i'm just going to kind of go gently on this to see if i can get some of this rust to come off [Music] well i wasn't really getting anywhere with the steel wool and i got impatient so i got the sandpaper out and about all that did was end up taking most of the paint off um if you look at the other side it was actually originally had a uh kind of a black paint coating on it um you know if i had more time i would sand this the rest of the way down and repaint it but like i said i really didn't want to damage the sticker and in the interest of time i really just wanted to get the thing working again so i'm not too worried about this back plate right now so at this point all the buttons are cleaned off about as good as they're gonna get i've got all these little rubber connection pieces cleaned off as good as they're gonna be uh all the contacts are cleaned so now there's nothing else to do except wait a couple hours and see how our plastic cover piece is uh coming along okay so what i've done here is i've actually soaked that top plate in three percent hydrogen peroxide and then covered it in a saran wrap so it's completely submerged and covered and it's been sitting outside under the sun for probably about four hours now so we're just going to take this off and see if chemistry did its thing and looking at this oh i can already tell it's really warm that water is really warm sitting outside and uh yes comparing it to the back it's not quite as bright as the back it's still a little yellow it might have benefited from a few more hours of of soaking and maybe at some point i'll take it apart again and let it sit out all day but this already looks quite a bit better so let's go ahead and get her put back together and test this thing out [Music] okay now that we've got the innards all uh put back together um now that i've got this under the light uh i can tell that uh doing the retrobrite technique helped but definitely didn't get it back up to uh probably the level that i had hoped and to be fair i had only really left it out there for maybe three and a half hours or so probably really needed uh maybe like all day uh since it was in pretty bad shape but the good thing is is that uh cleaning all of the buttons definitely helped i can definitely tell uh quite a big difference as far as just how uh responsive those are um we definitely cleaned everything out so it should run a lot better and that's uh that's really what i was going for here was uh optimum functionality so now we can put the the adjustment dials back in there so first we're gonna put uh we'll put the washer in and put that in on each side and then we can go ahead and put the nut in and we want to try to make sure that that is uh try to get it as flat as you can [Music] okay and last but not least we'll get our trusty arcade ball back into place just screws on like so and now we can try this thing out and see how she works super mario brothers probably everyone's first nes game they even mention this one right on the packaging specifically for the advantage although i'm personally just not a fan of using an arcade stick for platformers it's probably because having the standard rectangle controller is so seared into my brain that my muscle memory just prohibits me from playing the game this way doing the precise jumps and timing just doesn't work as well with the controls spread out like this what can i say i'm just all thumbs when it comes to these games man functionally the controller works great and is very responsive it's just not my preferred way of playing this type of game the turbo features aren't much use either since mario can't seem to fire more than two shots at a time with the fire flower anyway the slow motion feature doesn't really work as intended either i mentioned earlier sometimes this function was hit or miss and here's an example in super mario bros it takes about a half a second or so for the game to register the pause command from the controller which is fine but the advantage is sending the start button inputs so fast that the game can't register them all at once and you end up with the game stopping and starting every half a second or so next up rc pro-am this is one of my favorite games i used to play super off-road on an arcade machine at the local bowling alley so playing an overhead racer like this via arcade stick feels totally normal there's not much use for turbo since holding down the b button steps on the gas anyway and you wouldn't really want to use it for the a button since you'd end up wasting all of your special attacks the slo-mo feature is totally worthless on this game it's pausing and unpausing the game at such a high rate that you can't make any forward progress at all but steering with the arcade stick avoiding hazards and navigating around hairpin turns is just awesome i'd totally use the nes advantage as a go-to controller for this game [Music] top gun oh yeah we're going there this was actually the first additional game that i got with my nes as a christmas present to go along with the included super mario brothers duck hunt cartridge so yeah i'd be lying if i said top gun was my favorite game ever it wasn't much fun at the time and it didn't really age well either but i gotta say using the nes advantage makes this game very playable and actually fun in a whole different way using the joystick to steer your plane makes it feel like you're right inside the cockpit it's a very different method of steering that's just not really possible with the simple d-pad losing enemies on your tail or locking onto enemies with missiles has a much more realistic feel to it with the arcade controls the turbo feature is helpful for your plane's machine gun weapon since otherwise you'd have to sit there and mash on the button yourself slow-mo is a non-factor you can't pause the game but otherwise yeah i have to confess using the nes advantage on this game kind of makes me want to play the whole game again and that's an accomplishment hey i even landed the plane on the first try teenage mutant ninja turtles 2 the arcade game hey it's an arcade game so let's play it with an arcade joystick right this definitely feels kind of like playing in the arcades the es ports certainly had its limitations but having the arcade controls is a nice touch similar to super mario bros i'm probably more used to playing this on the original nes controller and d-pad so it may just be a personal bias but my muscle memory is making precise jumps and special moves feel not quite as tight for me as it would with the standard controller your mileage may vary though so it's definitely still worth trying for a more proper arcade experience i could see myself playing through the whole game this way but i think later on in the game against some of the super difficult bosses like shredder i'd probably want to switch back to the d-pad but it would still be cool if you had two people playing co-op like this there's also not much use for either of the turbo buttons since you're going to want manual control over jumping and using your weapon this would also be a good time to point out this controller is actually really noisy in a game like this you're gonna be mashing buttons and anyone in the room over is totally gonna hear you go into town on this thing the slo-mo feature actually works for this game although it's uh not perfect it helps a little bit especially with these jerks but there's a catch since the game is pausing and unpausing so fast depending on when you go to press a or b it's possible the game may be paused during that split second when you sent the button input so in that situation the game isn't going to know that you tried to jump or swing your weapon and you'll just be standing there like a goober you have to compensate for this by just always rapidly pressing the button anytime you're using the slo-mo feature realistically i couldn't see myself using slo-mo for long in a game like this but in general the nes advantage works great for this game and i think it would be a lot of fun to try with two players this way as well [Music] [Music] ah gradius this game has some of my favorite box art of all time i love this game even though i'm terrible at it and genuinely dreadful at space shooters in general i feel like this type of game is what the developers had in mind when they were coming up with this controller though i'd be curious to know whether speedrunners would ever use the advantage for something like this or if they prefer the d-pad being awful at shmups myself it's tough to know the difference but the controls all feel smooth steering your ship around at awkward angles to dodge enemies feels precise and this definitely makes it feel like you're playing an arcade game which i think is the whole point you can dial up turbo for the ship's main weapon and the slow motion even works i'll leave you to debate the cheating ethics of using the nes advantage slow motion feature in the comments below which is worse the nes advantage exploiting the game's pause mechanic which is already built into the game or something like the game genie which manipulates the game's code to give you something like infinity lives or invulnerability [Music] star voyager if you like star master on atari you like star voyager you have a navigation screen and can warp around the galaxy to planets to pick up power ups visit refueling stations and warp to known enemy locations this game is open-ended and you're free to roam around the galaxy in whatever order you want using the nes advantage joystick to steer this thing is just fantastic it makes it feel like you're in the cockpit of your very own spaceship and i could fritter an hour away just tooling around space not doing anything dial up turbo for your ship's main weapon and you're all set and i like having the select button off to the side for bringing up the ship's navigation menu i don't know it kind of just makes it feel like you're pressing random buttons on the dashboard of your own spaceship as a side note i think i really need to give this game some closer attention in a standalone video sometime down the road what do you think and last but not least it's pac-man what can you say it's just pac-man you can't get much more arcade than that sometimes the simple things are the best things you don't need fancy turbo buttons or a silly slow-motion switch just a call back to the straightforward times of arcade classics that were easy and fun to play this may not be the best version of pac-man available but having a nice arcade joystick to play this classic game is sure to make you feel like you're back in the arcades again the result would probably feel the same with just about any nes arcade port if you wanted to use the advantage so if you like pac-man or arcade games in general and just want to recreate that nostalgic arcade feeling picking up an nes advantage and scooping up as many nes arcade ports as you could find is certainly not the worst idea in the world well what did you think did you have an nes advantage growing up did you prefer the advantage over the regular nes controller what were some of your other favorite games to play with the nes advantage as always thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade here's a list i've been wanting to get to for a while nes games i hated at the time there's no rhyme or reason to this list and it's certainly not meant to be an all-encompassing look at every bad nes game ever made instead i'm just gonna reminisce about some of the games that made an initially negative impression on me growing up and then we'll see if that hate truly was justified or if the game really was a clunker first up deadly towers now in order to truly wrap your mind around why i would even have played this game as a kid first let me introduce you to the great little colonial pantry a convenience store gas station type place in the little town of 800 or so that i grew up in i'll mention the colonial pantry several times in this video because it was the only place in a podunk midwestern small town where a broke little kid could rent nes games in the 80s and it was even within reasonable walking distance of my house i don't even think this chain of stores exists anymore but if you've ever been to a casey's general store it's a lot like that in fact casey's even eventually moved into my little town and put the colonial pantry out of business which is why the only picture i can find of it is one of it being torn down so they could put in another bar anyway the colonial pantry had everything a little kid could want five cent gummy worms slush puppies yeah remember those and a handful of nes games to rent of course this being pre-internet all you really had to go on was the box art and the cover for deadly towers looks pretty cool worth a shot right deadly towers was developed by irim and released by brodeubond in 1986. okay regardless of how this game is remembered now try and picture this through the eyes of a seven-year-old little kid playing it for the first time you're all excited and you rent this game where you play as a prince going off on a quest to burn down these seven deadly towers and defeat the devil of darkness himself and there's some good things going on here your character can move around in eight different directions with an isometric view that wasn't common in games from this era the music is pretty good and there's a variety of enemies the problem is they put all these enemies on one screen your character is slow as molasses and they gave you the weakest sword in video game history yeah it's one of those games where you can barely make it past the first few screens without immediately dying the game even taunts you with a password system which gives you a password for the very beginning of the game great i got it thanks i never had the patience as a kid to get much further in this game and as an adult i have no desire to even try [Music] top gun now here's a game that brings back memories story time kids when i first got my nes as a christmas present from my grandparents it actually came in the form of two wrapped presents the first was a much larger present and the second a smaller present which unbeknownst to me at the time just happened to be the exact size of an nes game box i had been begging for an nes all year after those epic commercials started airing but had conceded that i was probably just going to be stuck playing atari games for the foreseeable future finally christmas rolls around and i see these two presents sitting there under the tree my immediate instinct was to unwrap the smaller present first and then the bigger present because the biggest present had to be the best right so as a little kid i couldn't understand why my grandparents told me i had to unwrap the larger present first before unwrapping the smaller present well the biggest one was indeed a nintendo entertainment system complete with super mario brothers duck hunt and the nes zapper that's just fantastic thank you grandma and grandpa also i really miss you guys the second present top gun on the nes ah now it all made sense so top gun ended up being the first additional game i got to play for the nes alongside the package duck hunt and super mario brothers games and my feeling about this game was always a little underwhelming okay so first up let me just say i didn't necessarily hate this game as a kid that's a bit harsh i always felt like the music and sound effects were really good it doesn't have many tracks but what konami did include here was awesome and the sounds really do make it feel like you're flying an f-14 tomcat the simple graphics do manage to create a 3d effect that's very playable also this game is really fun to play if you have an nes advantage the turbo controls and joystick lend themselves perfectly to this type of game and it really makes it feel like you're in the cockpit of a fighter jet the biggest complaints are typically the refueling sequences as well as the landing sequence but somehow as a kid i figured out the trick to the landing sequence pretty quick okay so here's what happens at the end of each stage you have to land your f-14 on an aircraft carrier while your dashboard goes bananas with messages like up up right left speed up speed down up up these are confusing and typically wrong here's what you're supposed to do if you look toward the bottom it tells you your alt is supposed to be 200 and your speed should be 288 you've got meters for alt and speed to the right so just speed up or down accordingly and move the plane's nose up or down until you get pretty close to those readings completely ignore the messages on the dashboard and just try to keep the aircraft carrier toward the center of your screen while you're doing all of this and you should land the plane perfectly every time the other annoying thing that tripped up most people was the refueling sequence after the first level the levels got just long enough to where you'll start to run out of fuel and have to refuel mid flight this is frustrating because you only have a limited amount of time to pull it off or else the refueling plane just leaves and you're stuck playing out the mission till you run out of fuel and crash i never really could figure out the pattern for this sometimes i get it right within seconds other times i completely screw it up you just have to do the best you can honestly though my biggest complaint about this game was just the length it's a really short game you get four missions the first of which is just training for the next mission after that the levels are all a little longer but they're not at all difficult hell if you just fly straight up you'll fly over most of the enemies there's a boss at the end of all but the first stage but if you just pick the stronger missiles and save those for the end you'll breeze right through it once you get the hang of the landing and refueling sequences you can get through this whole game in under an hour and that was my biggest disappointment after seeing commercials for all of these epic nes adventure games like legend of zelda i got stuck with a short jet fighter game that wasn't much fun to play beyond the first 20 minutes and speaking of bad christmas presents i give you dr mario i've told this story before on a few live streams but here it is for those that missed it there's definitely a theme here little kid keeps asking for legend of zelda for christmas and keeps getting something else entirely by this time a couple of years had gone by and i still hadn't gotten legend of zelda but there was a very nes game box sized present under the tree this year so it had to be zelda right nope dr mario i think this is where as a kid i started to get a little more bitter and jaded toward big corporations i was starting to learn the ways of the world and how big evil corporations dupe unsuspecting parents and grandparents into buying crappy products for their kids by slapping their favorite characters on an otherwise unremarkable package okay so to be fair dr mario isn't a terrible game at all it's actually a fairly inventive little puzzle game not unlike tetris this time you play as a doctor dropping different colored pills onto viruses match up four colors in a row with a virus to take them out you can even take out viruses by lining up the color sideways which was cool this game also had an excellent soundtrack that was perfect for chilling out and killing some viruses and it featured an adventive two-player mode that allowed you to drop hill parts onto an unsuspecting opponent and completely screw up their day it's a very well done puzzle game there's just one problem it doesn't have anything to do with mario at all and there's no valid or otherwise justifiable reason for slapping mario on the box except to sell some extra copies he could have just as easily not had mario and call the game virus panic or something and it's the same game having mario there does nothing and my grandparents were so excited that they bought me another mario game i didn't have the heart to tell them it was just a boring puzzle game with mario slapped on the box as i wouldn't want to risk hurting their feelings so is this game really that bad well no it's just that when you want a sweeping 8-bit adventure game like legend of zelda and he gets stuck with dr mario due to shady marketing well it's hard not to be annoyed with this one [Music] castlevania ii simon's quest this was another colonial pantry special the cover of this game was so tantalizing i mean look at it it's castlevania by now i'm sure i had seen the commercials for this game too this looked like the epic quest i'd been longing for since apparently i was never going to get my hands on legend of zelda so invariably i'd get this thing home and pop it in the old nes sand okay cool it's like we start off in a town here i'll just go to the left and see what's oh nope nope nope oh crap and that pretty much sums up my whole experience with this game as a little kid i mean the criticisms of this game have been done to death so you know the drill it's confusing you don't really go it takes forever to build up your hearts which you use to buy stuff the townsvoke don't really give you any useful clues the day to night transitions are annoying yada yada so at this point i was probably seven or eight years old i had a subscription to nintendo power at some point in there but i must not have gotten the issues for this game so i didn't really know where to go or what to do and it was a rental so i didn't even have a manual to work with and i mean look i was all for a non-linear trial and error type of gaming experience somewhere a little later on i got my hands on shadowgate and stuff like that not to mention a few text adventures on computer like space quest so this should have been right up my alley but it just went way over my head or i must have caught it at the wrong time and i just wasn't quite ready for it the weirdest thing is that every few months i'd forget that i had already rented this game seriously so i'd be up at the colonial pantry get myself some gummy worms and a slush puppy i'd see castlevania 2 on the shelf and think holy crap it's simon's quest i have to rent this and get it home and within 30 seconds i'd remember oh yeah it's that game i must have done that like four or five times before it finally sunk in that i actually hated this game that box art just kept reeling me in i really wanted to like it the gothic level design really takes you into the lore of dracula in transylvania and noriyasu tagakushi put together an incredible soundtrack one of the best on the nes i know there's a rom hack floating around out there by the almighty guru called the redaction which fixes most of the game's bigger issues at some point i want to do a live stream and play through that whole thing so i can get the true simon's quest experience i thought i was gonna get some three decades ago [Music] speaking of live streams this would be a good time to mention since there are a lot of new faces here i actually have a let's play channel called friday night arcade plays these videos are a bit more casual and unedited just me hanging out playing some random game old or new maybe a live stream here or there there are also a lot of older videos from the channel's early years with my best friend jason and i playing through random games old and new we did a run through several old nes and super nes titles such as teenage mutant ninja turtles or super star wars but we also team up and play some modern stuff like dayz we also did an entire playthrough of broforce a throwback to old-school 2d run and gun shooters that nearly killed me so stop by and check out friday night arcade plays sometime if you want to hang out with me in a more casual setting hope to see you soon at friday night arcade plays the adventures of fireball the adventures of bayou billy one last treat from the old colonial pantry the box art certainly looked promising enough the plot of this game isn't complicated have you seen crocodile dundee well then you've seen the adventures of bayou billy swashbucklin crocodile wrastlin outback guy goes off to save his girlfriend from the stereotypically evil cigarette smoking portly guy with the twirly mustache there's even an adventures of bayou billy comic books so you can take the story with you wherever you go yes this is a real thing that actually exists anyway the gameplay is somewhere along the lines of double dragon side-scrolling beat-em-up action occasionally you pick up a weapon this should be a no-brainer but unfortunately this game is insanely difficult common enemies take like 179 hits to kill meanwhile they inflict tons of damage this game is impossible my first experience getting this game home as a riddle and popping it in probably looked something like this i made it two or three screens in before getting pummeled to death and already having to burn up and continue i tried a couple of times and i think i made it as far as this river section on the first level before i just gave up i actually walked back up to the colonial pantry and tried to exchange it for something else i think i made up something like the cartridge just didn't work in my nes and i remember the store clerk just giving me this look like this probably wasn't the first time a little kid tried to return this game come to find out though the japanese version of this game is actually 10 times better in japan this game was called mad city and it's basically the same game but before konami enacted the make the game preposterously difficult to beat policy for its u.s release also the box art from mad city looked way more like crocodile dundee but anyway holy crap this game is actually really fun there's gun stages driving stages the action is solid and the gameplay is pretty smooth the enemies occasionally even drop health or a bulletproof vest to help you out you get a whip like simon belmont in castlevania i never saw any of this crap when i rented the game 30 years ago heck just seeing the second stage blew my mind just wow so you basically spend the whole game pummeling driving and shooting your way through this guy's henchmen until you get to blast your way into his mansion and rescue your girlfriend there's a few tougher enemies to beat along the way sure but the challenge is honest and not stupid there's some really good music along the way you can get through it in about an hour or so and the conclusion is satisfying huh i never thought i'd see the ending of this game [Music] well what did you think what were some of the games you hated growing up were they really as bad as you remember or were you just expecting something else did you ever try returning a game to the rental store because it was so bad as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade i remember seeing commercials for the battle of olympus when i was a kid and for some reason it was advertised alongside the guardian legend obviously now i know that they were both from broader bund but when i was a little kid it confused the heck out of me were they the same game was one a sequel were they related to legend of zelda who knows i was like seven i didn't know what the hell was going on but i knew i wanted to play one or all of these games the battle of olympus was developed and released by irim and brotherbund in 1988 and certainly the most obvious comparison would be to legend of zelda 2 but i feel like there's a lot of castlevania 2 simon's quest here as well maybe even more so the story plays loosely with greek mythology you play as orpheus a greek musician and son of apollo the god of archery in the game you're tasked with rescuing your girlfriend yura dicey who's been kidnapped by the dark lord hades because well princesses were always getting kidnapped in the 80s i said this game played fast and loose with the mythology because in the actual mythology eurodice dies and orpheus goes to the realm of hades to try to see her again hoping to impress the lord of hades himself with his musical abilities so that she can live again in the story orpheus actually does impress the lord of hades who agrees to let her leave with him under the condition that she has to follow him out of the underworld and he cannot look back at her until they both reach the surface of the living again if he's patient they can live together again but if orpheus is not patient eurydice will be snatched back to the realm of hades forever orpheus gets about a few feet from the exit when he realizes he can't hear her footsteps behind him and thinking he'd been tricked he turns around to look like a dope she was behind him all along though so orpheus inadvertently broke the deal and angered hades eurodice gets trapped in the realm of hades forever and orpheus is forced to live out the rest of his days in lonely grief playing with his instrument before he gets ripped to pieces by a roaming horde of lunatic women and if that's depressing don't worry in the game you can just rescue eurydice from hades with your adventuring adventures and stuff battle of olympus is a side-scrolling action-adventure game that looks an awful lot like zelda 2 the adventure of link although there's really no overworld to speak of instead you just move left right up or down throughout various environments such as towns forests caves or castles i said before this game reminds me more of simon's quest in that way rather than having a fleshed-out overworld screen you can move around in like zelda 2 you just go a certain way on the side scrolling screens and that takes you to the next area sometimes it's a specific door or a stairway or sometimes it's just going all the way to the right the overworld screen is just a map that pops up once you leave an area letting you know specifically where you are but that's its only function that's helpful though because even though the game is non-linear there's certain areas you really aren't supposed to go until you find various items to help you out on your quest magical items like the staff of fennel the shield of athena special swords and everything else you'd expect in an adventure game based on greek mythology you'll also get clues about each area from the townsfolk that you meet along the way similar to simon's quest but unlike simon's quest these clues are usually pretty helpful and actually makes sense for example one guy tells you you'll need the power to jump high and the ability to control fire if you go to peloponnesis so you'll need to find the sandals of hermes as well as possess the ability to shoot fire from the staff of fennel before you can go there hey that's a legitimately useful piece of information occasionally the openness of the game can backfire for example there's a boss battle pretty early in the game and if you aren't moving through the game in the order the developers would like you to which is something i have a tendency to do this battle may seem impossible well you're supposed to get the shield first to help you block the arrows so odds are if you're having trouble with a particular area you may have missed something and need to backtrack and that's basically just what this game is walking around exploring new areas finding new items and using them to fight enemies the graphics are pretty dang good certainly not the best ever but colorful and easy on the eyes there's a pleasant musical track to accompany you on your quest and there's plenty to do in this game part of the fun is just exploring each new area and chatting up the townsfolk it's like god of war light with the greek mythology sprinkled in sure you could just grab an online walkthrough but i challenge you to only use that sparingly for the true late 80s gaming experience battle of olympus is absolutely still fun today and definitely worth your time if you're a fan of these types of games especially at the price point of like 10 bucks or less what did you think of this one thank you so much for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade hey real quick if you're a subscriber to friday night arcade please stick around to the end of the video for a special announcement regarding the channel going forward rescue the embassy mission was released on the nintendo entertainment system in 1990 by kimco this was actually a port of a french computer game called hostages which was developed and released in the late 80s by infogrames the story here is a group of terrorists have taken over an embassy and are holding an ambassador and his staff hostage your job is to infiltrate the area take out the terrorists and rescue the hostages sounds like this would be a typical run and gun shooter however it's totally not that the game is broken up into three sections each with a unique style of gameplay you'll have to infiltrate the area and get your snipers into position then use your snipers to take out as many terrorists through the windows as you can freeing up a route for the rescue squad the rescue squad then gets lowered onto the roof of the building via helicopter and has to repel down the side jumping through the windows and then the game goes into first person mode where you have to clear out any of the remaining terrorists in the building first section looks like a typical side scroller but you'll actually do no shooting at all the goal here is to avoid being seen by the spotlights while you move each of your three snipers into position one at a time your sniper's names are mike steve and jumbo if the terrorists see you in the spotlight they'll open fire so you'll have to crawl or roll jump to avoid detection and you can also hide in the doorways of these buildings or in the bushes if you hide you can check your position on the map each sniper has a specific building they need to get to and this part can be a little confusing it's sort of like navigating from house to house on friday the 13th but the area isn't quite as large the good news is each time it's the same so once you learn which building each sniper is supposed to go in you can get away with not checking the map technically you don't even have to get all three in position you can still finish the game with one or two snipers or jumbo has to go all the way around to the opposite side of the block so he'll probably be a goner for sure you knew the risks when you signed up jumbo the play control in this area is pretty stiff and sometimes the hit detection when you're getting fired at in the spotlights can be inconsistent so this could be potentially the most frustrating part of the game until you get the hang of it once you get your snipers set up your rescue squad will get lowered onto the roof and it's time to start taking out the terrorists with your sniper rifle you can switch back and forth on the map between any of your snipers and whatever terrorists you take out here will save you some time on the back end plus you'll need to at least clear out any peeking out of the windows on the top floor so the rescue squad can infiltrate the building there's not much to this just move the sniper scope around until you see the shadows and the windows and then take them out that's right you're actually playing a tactical sniper in an nes game i mean up to this point we'd played sidescrolling shooters like contra or whatever but it's crazy to think something like this was allowed on the nes this is pretty on the nose you're just picking guys off in a building one by one from across the street it's fairly realistic for the time and there's even a bit of sway when you're looking down scope there's no real way to know when you're done here just make sure there's at least nobody on the top floor then go back to the map screen and pick out one of the rescue squad you've got ron dick and kimco pick one and move it to the side of the building where you're confident there is no bad guys on the top floor looking out the windows and then you'll go to this weird repel mode you have to rappel down the side of the building and break through the glass but the controls are stupid if you press down for too long you'll fall to your death so you have to press down and then quickly press up to stop yourself from gaining too much momentum and basically just inch down the side pressing down and up repeatedly until you're over a window as long as there's not a bad guy there press a to smash through to the next stage this part is unnecessary and kind of annoying with the sketchy controls and odds are you'll end up wasting a few lives before you get it right you've got three guys on the rescue squad so that's basically your three lives here if they all die it's game over once inside the game goes into first person shooter mode that's right kids there's actually a first person shooter on the nintendo entertainment system actually the art style here should look familiar to mcventure fans i mentioned before this game was from kimco who also did the nes mcbench reports of shadowgate deja vu and the uninvited and the similarities are hard to miss i'm trying to shoot all these terrorists but i can't resist the urge to look for torches or search the shelf for clues who knows maybe there's something important in this heat register ah no time for that now okay so you've got a few things going on from this view you've got your character's viewpoint here and movement is pretty straightforward just turn or move forwards then shoot the bad guys you can also duck to avoid getting shot and try not to shoot the hostages which are in blue you've also got a map on the lower left giving you the layout of the floor you're on along with the counter in the upper left letting you know how many bad guys are left on each floor then you've got a timer in the upper right move your way through each floor taking out the bad guys as quickly as possible and i have to say this area is done as well as you could ask for given the limitations of the 8-bit hardware sure this ain't no doom 2016 but take a minute and look at this through the eyes of someone playing console games in 1990 it's impressive given everything that's going on here enemies moving around off-screen moving around the area is snappy heck there's even blood wait what that's right kids this game which was officially released on the nintendo entertainment system features enemies collapsing in a bloody heap after you shoot them at point-blank range wow i'm really surprised they got away with that even if it was well before the esrb once you take out all the bad guys pat yourself on the back because you just beat the game there are multiple endings depending on how many of your team as well as how many of the hostages survive the ordeal [Applause] [Music] i mentioned the timer earlier and that's something we need to talk about this game is criminally short okay at the beginning of the game you've got several difficulty choices the first three choices dictate how hard the game is going to be how fast the search lights move how many enemies are inside the building stuff like that second set of choices dictates how much time you have to complete the mission ranging from 10 minutes being the toughest and 18 minutes being the easiest but that means that even at its longest you would only have 18 minutes to beat the entire game start to finish now granted this game would probably take you quite a bit longer than that the first time through especially just getting used to some of the stiff controls in certain areas but once you get the hang of it the entire game can be beaten in under 10 minutes and then there's not much reason to come back to it unless you just want to make sure everybody survives or you're going for the shortest possible time heck you could skip the sniping part all together and just repel into the building as long as there's not a bad guy at the window you're trying to break into so with that being said i'm not sure i could necessarily recommend going out of your way to play this game unless it's just for curiosity's sake or you just want to see what a first person shooter would look like on the nes i will at least credit them for coming up with something different it's definitely not like much of anything else on the console also the music isn't bad at all it actually kind of changes a little depending on the action on screen which is interesting like on the searchlight stage if you hide in the bushes the music goes off quiet for a minute the graphics on the cutscenes and in the sniper area are well done but once you figure out how to play the game there's just the one mission and not much reason to come back once you finish it so buyer beware you could do a lot worse for the five bucks or so this game goes for just know what you're getting into and temper your expectations with this one what did you think did you play this one growing up or discover it more recently what are some other oddball games like this on the nes that you can think of [Music] hey thanks for sticking around to the end i wanted to let you know that i'm going to be changing the upload schedule for friday night arcade episodes from this point going forward new episodes of friday night arcade will be posted every other friday at 6 a.m central time instead of every friday like it was before i do apologize for the confusion here but there are some good reasons for this uh first up this will give me time to make slightly longer episodes probably in the 12 to 25 minute range consistently depending on the topic second this may actually give me a chance to cover more games depending on the specific topic of the video for example rather than making a short 3 minute video on one specific game you've never heard of i may be able to make a 20 minute video covering several games you've never heard of and third well i've just got a lot on my plate right now in real life don't worry everything's okay there's just a lot going on right now and i've got a lot of irons in the fire but this schedule will give me a little bit of extra flexibility in case my week suddenly fills up with other stuff so that i don't feel like i have to rush out a short video that may not be as high of quality you know i don't want to have to rush something out just for the sake of getting something published every single friday i do apologize if this is a bit disappointing i've been mulling this over for a long time now before coming to this conclusion but at the end of the day i felt like this really was the best choice going forward just for my own personal life schedule as well as maintaining a standard of quality for the channel going forward this wasn't a decision i came to lightly and who knows if things change again we may go back to weekly uploads but for now this is just the way it's gotta be i can't say enough how much i appreciate all of your support though this channel has really taken off further than i ever thought it would and that's all thanks to you tuning in each week and also all of the kind and encouraging words along the way not just in the past few months as this channel really took off but in the four and a half years before that when i didn't know what the heck i was doing and well i still don't really know what the heck i'm doing but anytime i think about just throwing in the towel on this whole youtube thing and the channel hardly had any viewers those of you that were tuning in would always leave a kind word and you just have no idea how encouraging that was to keep going anytime i think about just quitting somebody would chime in and say how much they were enjoying the show and yeah i mean it just blows my mind that anybody watched it at all when i made my first video i didn't think anybody would even see it and here coming up in october it'll be five years since i posted my first video and all of a sudden here we are that just totally blows my mind it's insane so anyway i just wanted to say thank you to each and every one of you for supporting the channel over the years whether you're a new subscriber or whether you're somebody that's been there since the beginning that's all i've got for now but thank you so much for watching and of course please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade [Music] hey everyone over the last few weeks i've been live streaming a bit here on friday night arcade and we've had a lot of fun thanks to everyone that showed up and hung out these past few weeks on the live streams it's been a blast i wanted to let you know that i'm going to be live streaming a bit more often but instead of live streaming on the main channel i'm going to be moving the streams over to twitch so head on over to twitch.tv backslash friday night arcade if you want to come hang out the reason for this is well i'll level with you it's a youtube algorithm thing live streaming in the main channel screws up how the regular episodes end up in your subscriber feed because youtube is complicated so here's what i'll do if you want to come hang out with me in a more casual setting on the live stream stop by twitch.tv backslash friday night arcade if you miss a stream but want to check it out later i'll archive them over on the youtube side channel friday night arcade plays and i'll put links to all of this in the description sorry it has to be so complicated but that's that's just how youtube works i just put everything on the main channel but last time i live streamed on the main channel this happened no joke live streaming totally nukes your youtube channel for some reason anyway i'm not 100 sure what my live streaming schedule is going to look like yet and it will probably be a little bit all over the place but you can follow me on the twitters at fn arcade and i'll let you know when i'm going to go live so coming out on my live streams at twitch.tv backslash friday night arcade if you want and if you have zero interest in all of this live streaming business do nothing regular episodes will still air right here every friday so sit back relax and enjoy this week's episode of friday night arcade and thank you for watching [Music] meet mark mark was walking home from a baseball game one night when he saw a falling star that was so beautiful his eyes got moist and before he knew it a giant flying gargoyle monster named bert landed in front of him as these things typically go bird asked mark to come help him fight a bunch of evil monsters on his homeworld and marx said but dude i'm like ten and bert said nah it's cool just bring your bat then they fuse together for some reason and so begins the story of monster party one of the weirdest games on the nintendo entertainment system monster party was developed and released by bendai on the nes in 1989 and the box art tells the story this game was meant to be a tribute to all of the great horror movie relics of old you've got dracula medusa creature from the black lagoon maybe you play as mark in your main weapon as the baseball bat which is unfortunately on the weak side it seems like it takes way too many hits to knock out a lot of the enemies but you can also use the bat to knock projectiles back towards the enemies and that's a little bit more powerful really though you're almost better off avoiding enemies unless they're outright blocking your path or if you're just trying to replenish your health but then it becomes a little tedious trying to take out enemies over and over again sometimes you'll see an enemy drop an item like a question mark or pills there's a chance the power up will turn you into burke the monster you fused with at the beginning of the game burt can fly and also shoots projectiles and he's definitely the more powerful of the two playable characters what sets this game apart from your standard nes pair is the bizarre and often horrific scenery in enemies you'll have to fight through all sorts of terrors like these eyeballs demon dogs walking fish heads what are these now partially buried corpses alligators snakes walking pants what the and each of the stages are different the first stage goes all creepy funhouse about halfway through and everything changes into this nightmarish hellscape with grisly corpses and skulls everywhere this is pretty messed up for a kids game on the nes as you explore these stages you'll see these doorways so you're supposed to go into these doors which is where the boss guardians are sometimes there's a boss and sometimes it's just an empty room sorry i'm dead wait what each stage has a handful of these bosses that you'll have to defeat in order to get the key to exit the stage these bosses are their own sort of weird you've got a well that throws plates at you zombies giant eggplants medusa mummies fried shrimp and onion rings huh how about that they spout off weird little one-liners to taunt you too for example the first boss this man-eating eggplant yells out hello baby when you first walk in this doesn't make much sense except that actually this game got heavily edited from its initial version there was an initial prototype that surfaced some time back showing what the game originally would have looked like not only was this game heavily censored such as the bloodier version of the title screen but several of the bosses were altered to avoid copyright troubles the eggplant boss was actually going to look more like the man-eating plant from little shop of horrors the cat monster was actually going to be a mogwai that changes into a gremlin in level 7 the dark world tower you fight a grim reaper boss although in the original version it looked more like a xenomorph from the alien franchise a closer look at this creature on the box art reveals what appears to be the xenomorph monster and i guess they changed the game but didn't bother to change the art at that point although with all the censorship in this game i'm not sure how the grim reaper made it in when you first meet him he taunts you by welcoming you to the entrance to hell this game doesn't mess around some of these bosses are pretty easy you maybe just have to stand in one spot and swing the bat to knock the projectiles back for damage but other times these bosses are pretty tough and go spazzing out all over the place you'll want to try to enter the boss areas as bert if you can although that leads me to this game's more annoying flaws whenever you change to the more powerful bert you're on a pretty short time limit before you change back to the weaker mark i think it would have been better if maybe it was based more on how much health you had like maybe if you're two-thirds full you changed bert but if your health drops too low you change back to mark i don't know some of the later stages are really tough stage six is a haunted house maze with doors all over the place there's only one boss but you'll have to go through all of the doors in just the right order to find the boss get the key and then escape the level in one piece there's these annoying blasts that come down from the ceiling and always seem to hit you and the music is aggravating too [Music] there's other weird stuff too at one point you find these dancing zombies who greet you by saying watch my dance you keep hitting them and no matter what they keep getting back up you're literally just supposed to stand there and watch them dance then they disappear and you can exit the room there's also a glitch in level 7 that could keep you from finishing the game normally in each level you enter the doors take out a total of three bosses to get the key and then you can exit the level well if you defeat all three bosses in level 7 your key just vanishes you actually get the key after beating the second boss and then due to a coding error the key just disappears from your inventory if you beat the third boss if you wrote down the password you can just restart the level but odds are you would have beaten all three bosses and made it all the way to the exit door at the end of the stage before you realized what happened there's some cryptic stuff in the final stage too where you start the level you're actually supposed to just walk straight to the left to get to one of the boss doors if you didn't know this you'll probably end up just going all the way to the right taking out the other two bosses and then you get to the exit and realize you still don't have the key so there's just all sorts of weird little quirks like that in this game and i'd be remiss if i didn't mention the ending so there be spoilers ahead kiddos once you get to the final door in level 8 you have to take out the final final boss this is a horrific looking oversized monstrosity just look at those eyes come and die holy crap then when you beat him bert thanks you and sends you home with this gift box you open it up and it's a princess so i guess she's just like mark's girlfriend now but then she turns into a monster and all sorts of other monsters pop out and suddenly mark turns inside out and dies whoa what the hell man thankfully you wake up and it turns out it was all a dream but then right as you're leaving for school burt shows up and asks if you want to go again ah no no i'm good thanks man so can i recommend this game well if you're looking for something spooky to play this halloween season it's definitely worth checking out it's by no means a perfect game and the difficulty could be a turn off for some i remember renting it a few times as a kid and never getting very far in it but the creepy monsters gave this game a unique mystique that i'll always remember graphically this game looks like an earlier nes game it's nothing special but the detailed haunting scenery is just not something you would see much of on an nes game geared towards little kids for the most part the soundtrack is pretty good although like i mentioned that level 6 music can go suck an egg this game also goes for cheap you can probably find it for like 5 or 10 bucks or so and you could do a lot worse in that price range well what did you think did you play this one growing up or maybe discover it more recently what are some of your other favorite spooky games to play on the nes this time of year as always thank you for watching please don't text and drive and i'll see you next time on friday night arcade

Channel: Friday Night Arcade

Views: 38,014

Rating: 4.8677688 out of 5

Keywords: nes games, friday night arcade, nintendo entertainment system, ninja gaiden ii, nes, shadowgate, uninvited, mike tysons punch-out!!, little nemo the dream master, best nes games, nes game reviews, review, commentary, gaming history, classic gaming, retro gaming, footage, gameplay, retrospective, nostalgia, 80s, 8 bit, chiptunes, old school games, top 10 nes games, nintendo games, mario, favorite nes games, faxanadu, nes hidden gems, mediaglitchhd, fridaynightarcade

Id: sANVfUwPsFk

Length: 223min 6sec (13386 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021