The Nintendo Entertainment System was, for its time, very powerful. This was a relative term, however, and the console has some limitations that, by modern standards, are absolutely suffocating. It’s little wonder, then, the variety of creative solutions employed to work around these limits and create the games that made the Nintendo the console that restored hope to the electronic games market.
Month: September 2016
The Legend of Zelda
Publisher: Nintendo
Year: 1987
Genre: Adventure
The Legend of Zelda! What can I possibly say about it that has not already been said more eloquently than I am able? The game has spawned numerous sequels that range from awesome to bizarre, (to the TRULY UNSPEAKABLE) but the original Legend of Zelda is the one that spawned it all!
The Legend of Kage
Publisher: Taito
Year: 1987
Genre: Platform
In The Legend of Kage, you are a young ninja whose bride was stolen by other ninjas. You need to kill those ninjas and retrieve her so she can be kidnapped again in the bizarre ninja version of the circle of life.
Gameplay is fairly straightforward – some levels require you to move to the end and defeat a sort of one-hitpoint-wonder boss. Other levels require you to kill a certain number of ninjas. Still others require that you just scale to the top of an impossibly tall wall. Whatever the case, Unless you grab the orb-of-lets-you-get-hit-one-extra-time, you die one hit, and hits often happen arbitrarily, owing to the frequency with which ninjas throw shurikens in random direction and your (admittedly realistic) inability to control a jump after you leave the ground.
John’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5. With repetitive and painfully arbitrary gameplay, a dearth of enemy varieties, clumsy controls and poor hit detection, the Legend of Kage might be enjoyable to play through once or twice, but it wears quickly and ages poorly.
Kid Niki: Radical Ninja
Year: 1987
Genre: Side-ScrollIn Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, you play the role of the titular kid ninja. Your bird was shot by an arrow and, in proper ninja form, you set out for revenge. The game consists of running along attacking ninjas and other enemies until you get to a boss.
There’s nothing wrong with this formula in general, but this execution is bland. I was a little torn as to whether to call this a “platform” game at all, given that there are no platforms to jump on top of. There are times you jump over pits and the like, sure, but you are always on the ground, with no over or under platforms.
Enemy attack patterns are predictable, but your radical ninja moves are sluggish, making evading most attacks impractical at best. Because of the lack of platforming or powerups in the game, the action is very linear and not particularly interesting. Compound this with the fact that hit detection is sporadic (at best) and you have a recipe for a completely forgettable game that probably isn’t worth your time.
John’s Rating: 2.0 out of 5.0. Kid Niki is dull. It’s not even really good enough to make fun of. The bosses are clearly designed to be silly or zany, but I’m not feelin’ it.
