Taito – Every NES Game

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.

"Why oh why did I ever leave the ground?" — “Why oh why did I ever 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.

Kill the same four ninjas a hundred thousand times.

Kid Niki: Radical Ninja

Publisher: Data East
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.

Kid Niki: Lackluster Title Screen

The most interesting screencap I could get.

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.

Also features tasteful religious imagery.

Elevator Action

Publisher: Taito
Year: 1987
Genre: Platform – Top-Scroll

The Elevator Action manual says that you are “Super Sleuth,” “Agent 17,” “Codename Otto,” but let’s face it: none of that has any bearing on the game whatsoever. In Elevator Action, you are a guy who tries to get to the bottom of a building after, for some reason, deciding to use a zipline to start at the top of the building. On the way down you can go into some doors and come out with paperwork, which scores you points. You can also shoot and jump-kick enemies.

In Elevator Action, you are the letter N.

I’ll be frank about this game – it can be fun, but there’s really nothing to it. It comes from an era when video games were still finding their footing. The controls are clunky and cantankerous, the enemies are slow and predictable and the game itself is vanilla flavored bland. If you fail to get the paperwork from one of the red doors, you are magically teleported back up to that floor when you get to your sporty little car at the bottom. However, if you DO get all of them, you are magically teleported to the TOP and the building changes color. Each iteration gives you enemies that spawn slightly more readily and are slightly more eager to shoot you, but the layout, gameplay and arrangements don’t change.

I wanted to show you a riveting action scene, but then I remembered that I was playing Elevator Action.

John’s Score: 2.5 out of 5.0. The game isn’t unplayable (although the touchiness of positioning may prove infuriating at first), but there really isn’t a compelling reason TO play it. Once you’ve made your way through the building once, the game is genuinely out of things to offer.

Arkanoid

Publisher: Taito
Year: 1987
Genre: Breakout Clone

Every day, people in the civilized world encounter, at bare minimum, four walls (presuming they have a coffee can in their bedroom to poop in), and you know what? Sometimes, we don’t like it. Sometimes, a man just has to say, “You know what, Mr. Wall? Who the hell are you to come into MY house and tell me which of MY rooms are partitioned from one another?” For those of you who, like me, have found themselves injuring some portion of their anatomy in a furious tequila-fueled attempt at libero cubiculum, Arkanoid may well prove to be the cathartic experience you need.

"Hey, kid - wanna eff up some walls?" — “Hey, kid – wanna eff up some walls?”

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