One type of game that never seems to get old is the vertical shoot-em-up.  One of the earliest, and one of my favourites on the NES is Star Force.  It was originally released in Japanese arcades in 1984, and eventually ported to the NES by Tecmo in 1987.  There are no gimmicks, and it’s nothing fancy.  It’s just good old fashioned alien blasting fun.

I don’t have the manual, so I have no idea what the plot is, and also there is no storyline in the game.  That is typical of the vast majority of shoot-em-ups up until the 21st century.  What I can tell is that your job is to blast everything in sight to rack up a high score.  There’s a nice variety of alien spacecraft, and they all fly in their own unique formations.  While most of them can be destroyed with one hit, the trick to doing well in the game is to recognize the formations the aliens fly in, and use that to effectively blast them away while avoiding their fire.  At the end of each level is an end boss that takes many more hits to destroy.  Each end boss is identical to the next with the exception of the Greek letter that is printed on it.  Each stage is named after the Greek alphabet, such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc.  You only have the one weapon in the game, and that is your double shot laser.  It fires up to three pairs of shots on screen at once, and can be upgraded to shoot faster.  Unlike Xevious, you don’t have to use separate weapons for ground and air targets as your weapon will destroy both.  There are a LOT of ground targets, so there is always something to hit.

About the only downside I can think of is that the stages don’t change much visually.  Each stage takes place in outer space, and about the only thing that changes visually is the colour scheme.  The graphics are very clean however, and the mostly plain background at least makes it very easy to see enemies, and their projectiles.  There are only three soundtracks in the game.  The default one is so quiet that it often gets drowned about by the shear amount of carnage going on.  The one that plays when you get the game’s only power up is suitably upbeat.  The boss music is a wicked tune that lets you know you’re in for a fight.  There isn’t much more to say about this game.  It’s a very simple game, but it controls great, has a lot of stuff to shoot at, and it’s a lot of fun.  It also plays very fast, and can provide a decent challenge.  It’s highly recommended for all really old school shooter fans.

Rating – 8 / 10

Back when I was a kid, my first impression upon playing Jaws for the NES was not a good one.  In fact I brought it back to the rental store, and told them it was broken.  Many years later I picked it up for a couple of bucks, and after spending some time with it I have to say that it’s not as bad as I initially thought.  It’s still not very good mind you, but it’s sometimes fun, and always challenging.  It was released by LJN, the masters of crappy licensed NES games, in 1987.

Jaws is a kind of hybrid arcade shooter and RPG.  You start off by piloting your sailboat on the map screen.  While moving on the map screen you will encounter random battles.  When a random battle takes place, you jump into the water with your scuba gear, and try to defeat all of the enemies using your harpoon gun.  The battles take place on one screen, and you can maneuver your diver in all directions, and you’re able to shoot to the left or to the right.  The enemies are mostly jellyfish and stingrays, but sometimes a shark, and Jaws itself will appear.  Enemies will sometimes drop seashells which you can use to level up your harpoon gun.  You can also earn seashells through the bonus rounds that you get to play.  In these bonus rounds you drop bombs from an airplane onto jellyfish.  It plays very similarly to Air-Sea Battle for the Atari 2600.  When you’ve earned enough seashells, you can level up your gun at the two ports that are on the map screen.  These upgrades are absolutely necessary if you want to inflict any significant damage on Jaws, because it’s practically invincible without them.  Having a controller with a turbofire option is also highly recommended.  As the game goes on the battles become more difficult.  The enemies move faster, and more erratically.  The battles will take place in shallower water more often, and that is more difficult, because there is less room to maneuver.

There are several flaws in Jaws that prevent it from being a great game.  Mostly it is extremely frustrating to beat.  When you die you not only lose a level, but Jaws regains all of it’s health.  I eventually just used a cheat code to skip right to the final battle with Jaws, and that was even more frustrating.  The final boss battle takes place in a 3D behind the boat view, and you have to lure Jaws out of the water with a probe, and then strike him with the your boat’s bow when he jumps out of the water.  Jaws moves very randomly in this battle, and you have to line him up precisely, and he also has to be a very particular distance away from your boat.  Other flaws include the extremely small map that barely covers one screen.  It would have been a lot better if there was some exploration involved.  More variety in the enemies would have been nice too.  The music fits the game well, but it can get repetitive.  The graphics won’t blow you away, but they get the job done.  The controls are pretty good for an underwater game, but you will have to get used to not being able to stop your diver on a dime.  If you play this game for a high score, then it’s okay to play once in a while.  If you plan to beat the game, then be prepared for frustration.

Rating – 5 / 10

Has there ever been a more appropriate title for a game?  It’s from the 80’s, and it’s an awesome racing game, it’s Rad Racer.  This was released by of all companies Square in 1987.  This was before Square found their calling making RPG’s.  Rad Racer borrows a lot from Sega’s Out Run, including the make of your car, and having the first stage set near a sandy ocean.  It does have a few differences that make it it’s own game.

Rad Racer is a 3D driving game that takes place in a behind-the-car view.  You’ll travel down normal highways, and try to negotiate corners while dodging traffic.  If you thought that traffic going to your daily commute was bad, just wait until you see the drivers in this game.  Not only do they hog the passing lanes, but they’ll often be three abreast, and worst yet they may try to side swipe you.  This does make the game interesting though, and makes it a lot of fun.  Hitting traffic doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll crash, but there’s a good chance you’ll skid off the road and into one of the many obstacles that line the sides of the roads.  After hitting an roadside object your car will sail through the air flipping about.  Despite how cool that looks, you don’t want to crash in this game, because that will waste valuable time, and you’re always racing against a clock that is counting down.  You can gain extra time by hitting a checkpoint, and you’ll move on to the next stage when all checkpoints are passed.  There are eight stages in all, and each of them are fairly long point-to-point races.  The stages are your usual seaside stage, night time stage, prairie stage, etc.  Rad Racer certainly doesn’t earn many points for originality.  I suppose one thing that was kind of cool back in 1987 is that your car is equipped with a turbo option.  Pressing up on the controller will make your car accelerate faster, but will make your car handle more poorly.

Nobuo Uematsu who is famous for composing the excellent music in the Final Fantasy series is also the composer for Rad Racer, but the results here are only okay.  It’s not bad music, but not good enough for me to turn it on during races.  Although since pressing down on the controller will turn on the music, you’ll be turning it on quite often in panicking situations.  The sounds effects are pretty good for the NES however.  It looks pretty nice too.  It doesn’t look quite as good as Sega’s Out Run for the Master System, but it scrolls and moves more smoothly.  I don’t think there were too many games of this type made for the NES, although it might be just that I don’t have too many games like this in my collection, but that being said it’s probably the best 3D racing game for the NES.  Whether or not you like it better than Out Run is a matter of choice.  Out Run is a bit more laid back, has better music, better graphics, but Rad Racer is more exciting.  I say get them both.  Rad Racer for sure is a must have for the NES.

Rating – 8 / 10

Although this game hardly needs an introduction I’ll give it one anyway.  It’s Super Mario Bros for the NES.  This was a revolutionary platformer that was launched with the NES in 1985, and it helped sell a lot of NES’s.  Anyone who was a kid in the 80’s has probably played this game, and for many of us it was our introduction to the third generation of home video gaming, because it was included with each NES sold.  It was a huge leap over the Atari 2600 and the like.  The old Atari was great, but it could never send us on an adventure like this game did.

In Super Mario Bros you make your way through 32 levels in order to save the princess from Bowser.  While this hardly sounds original, you have to remember that this is the first game in the Super Mario series.  Things such as mushrooms, coins, Bowser, stars, the music, and even Mario’s jumping animation all carried over to the numerous sequels.  You can defeat enemies by jumping on top of them, hitting them from the platform below, or shooting them with fireballs if you have that power-up.  You can transform into “Super” Mario by picking up a mushroom power-up, and it allows you to smash bricks with your head.  Getting hit by an enemy will turn you back into regular Mario.  Even though the first batch of NES games were limited by memory, Super Mario Bros makes up for that by making simple changes to the graphics to create the illusion that each world is unique.  World 3 changes the sky from blue to black to make it a night stage, while World 5 changes some colours to white to make it a snow stage.  New enemies are gradually introduced in each world, and it all makes the game seem like a grand adventure.

This is all stuff we know by now, and we also know that Super Mario Bros was a great game for it’s time, but does it still hold up today?  The answer is still a resounding yes!  The graphics are simple, but they are clean, the scrolling is very smooth, and all of the sprites are at just the right size.  The music is catchy, atmospheric, or ominous depending on the stage, and of course many of the tunes have carried over to later Mario games.  The controls are spot on.  It has some of the best, and most responsive controls of any game ever made.  It is the first game that I can remember playing that had a “run” button, and the ability to make a running start in order to jump higher and farther.  There is never a cheap death, and you’ll never want to throw your controller.  Each time you die you immediately analyze what happened, and make adjustments for the next time.  I’ve long since beaten Super Mario Bros many times, but these days I still play it to see how far I can make it without using the warp zones.  It’s also fun to go for a high score, because there are so many different ways to score points.  In short the game is just simply fun.  If you have an NES you probably have this game already, but if you don’t then classics like Super Mario Bros will make you consider getting one.

Rating – 9 / 10