Including and especially the bad ones
Year: 1986
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platform
Remember when you were a kid and balloons, powered by your imagination, could hoist you off the ground and into the stratosphere? Well, screw you, kid! That requires about a fafrillion balloons because physics, bitch! But you know where one can frequently take refuge from the doldrums of everyday physical reality? Video games, that’s where!
Year: 1986
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Shmup
While it may well be the first game I have encountered with poor response on the title screen, Commando is a strong proponent of the shmup truism, “You never run out of bullets: just grenades.”
It’s a respectable title as far as top-scrolling walking shmups go, but, as should be expected of the era, brings very little to the table as far as what we modern folk think of as originality. For its time, it was groundbreaking, of course, because when nothing has been done yet, everything is fresh.
John’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0, because it’s kinda fun, but not something you can maintain significant interest in – that is to say, it’s in the video game “friend zone.”
Year: 1986
Publisher: Bandai
Genre: Platform
Bandai, responsible for many of the most beloved brands and toy lines of the 1980’s and 1990’s, was also in the video game business at some point. This was a terrible, terrible mistake.
In this game, you’re a worthless stupid baby-angel who flies around like the world’s slowest mosquito trying to avoid being raped to death by dogs. That’s the most charitable description of this game I could write.
John’s Rating: 1.0 out of 5.0, because this game is a steaming turd.
Dark JCO’s Rating: 1.0 out of 5.0. How does a game like this even get made? “I have this great idea for a game! You’re this chubby little angel guy who flies around and eats all these foodstuffs, but there are these dogs who try to stop you.” “BRILLIANT! Send it to presses!” “But we’re still in the concept phase…” “No, no, we only have five minutes. Send it to presses!”
Lord Nightmare’s Rating: 1.0 out of 5.0. So it’s a game about a fat angel? A fat angel who flies around eating what appear to be random foodstuffs. Is he naked? And he’s being attacked by… the dog from Duck Hunt? Oh, that dog! if I see that dog one more time…
Year: 1986
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Shmup
It’s World War II and you’re a U.S. pilot flying a super-plane to Tokyo to destroy the Japanese air force! I have to admit, I initially had some serious misgivings about any game by a Japanese company about destroying the Japanese air force, and had to wonder whether it was the opposite in the original Japanese (and the game was, perhaps, called “Happy Pearl Harbor Fun Time Airstrike!”), but as far as I can tell (and according to Wikipedia) the Japanese just sometimes make games about destroying their own airforce.
John’s Rating: 2.0 out of 5.0 – this game is about as vanilla as a shoot-’em’-up can possibly get. As far as I can tell, there’s exactly one power-up, which basically makes your guns wider, and a grand total of three different enemies (not counting palette swaps).
Year: 1985
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Platform
I skipped this in my alphabetical listing because, frankly, I wanted to finish 1985 with a game that did not suck. Super Mario Bros. spawned the most successful video game franchise in history. You noticed I didn’t say, “probably” or “one of” anywhere in that sentence, and it isn’t because I am biased (though I probably am): Mario is, empirically speaking, the greatest video game franchise of all to this day. Though its impressive 40 million units sold is due, in no small part, to it being bundled with the console, many of the sequels continue to be worldwide best-sellers to this day. To this day. When I say “to this day” I mean “it still moves preposterous numbers of units when sold without any changes on virtual console.”
I could go on gushing about this. I could wax eloquent about Mario’s origins, his first appearance, or any of that crap that people talk about when Mario is presented in a blog. In fact, I think I will.
