Nintendo – Games & Tech with the Sarkologist

Publisher: Nintendo

Designer: Takashi Tezuka

Type: Arcade Adventure

Platform: NES

Release Date: 1986

Rating:

I’m not quite sure whether I could go as far as suggesting that this game is a proper roleplaying game, though I should point out that you do have quests, and you can not only pick up things, but you can also increase your character’s power through collecting, and buying, items. The other thing about this game is that fortunately when you die (you really don’t have that much in the way of health) is that while you go back to the start, you retain all of the stuff that you had when you were killed, which certainly does make this game a little easier.

Still, in many ways, this game does feel like it is just another arcade-style game, but I shouldn’t be too harsh on it because we are dealing with one of the original Nintendo consoles, which means that you only had two buttons on your controller. Also, the nasties that you have to battle aren’t all that fancy, but once again, I should point out that we are dealing with a rather old retro-game here.

It is fun though, despite it being pretty basic, and it certainly does look as if it is a pretty big game, which means that it is going to give you hours upon hours of gameplay. However, the instructions do point out that the nasties do get harder the further into the game you get, which sort of worried me because I found that the nasties around the start were pretty bad nonetheless. Yet, despite that, I did find out once you play it for a while you do eventually get the hang of the engine, which does make dealing with them somewhat easier.

Yeah, this game isn’t too bad, and of course, when we look at the later consoles that came about, there is certainly something to look forward too.

Anyway, you can find more information of this game (as well as the series as a whole) on Wikipedia, though I should mention that this game has a whole wikipage to itself as well, which you can also enjoy.

Super R-Type

Publisher: Nintendo

Designer: Irem

Type: Shoot-em Up

Platform: SNES

Release: 1991

Rating:

How can I describe this game other than as one of your typical shootem-ups. Well, I guess you could call it a typical shoot-em-up.

However, it wasn’t too bad, though, like a lot of similar games, this one can sort of grab your attention and drag you into a quagmire of simply spending heaps of time trying to see how far you can get. Well, I didn’t get caught up in that quagmire, not that I didn’t want to, but rather that I ended up getting bored rather quickly. Also, I kept on dying, but then again, that is sort of what you should expect to happen in such games.

I ended up getting bored rather quickly. Also, I kept on dying, but then again, that is sort of what you should expect to happen in such games.
I’m not sure if there is a story behind the game, but I suspect there is, not that you really pay all that much attention to it. It seems that you are basically a fighter pilot who flies their spacecraft towards a multitude of enemies and then have to face off against the big bad guy at the end of each level. Since I didn’t really get past the first big bad guy (as I said, it is challenging), I can say whether this is one of those ‘infinite loop’ type of games, though a part of me suspects that it just well maybe.

One interesting thing though is that you do have a power-up button, where you can charge your weapon to be extra strong simply by holding it down. Actually, I should also mention that I didn’t realise that you have two guns – one normal gun, and one that you can power up – though since these guns are pretty much, how do you say it, similar, I’m not sure why you have two.

In the end, though, this game was rather fun, though you may want to try to avoid getting sucked into a quagmire.

Anyway, you can find more information about this game on Wikipedia, of course, but there are also some reviews of this game as well, such as this site.