Although the NES had its highs, giving me some of my favorite gaming
memories, it definitely wasn't shy about drilling us all with stinkers at
regular intervals. Here are the NES games that made me cry:
10. Wrecking Crew (Nintendo, 1985) — At least one of
the crappy single-screen Mario games deserved a spot on this list, and
I went back and forth between this and Mario Bros. for a while. This
one won out because Mario doesn't even have the ability to jump. That's
right. The character originally conceived as "Jumpman" in Donkey Kong is
wearing lead shoes. And unlike Bionic Commando, he doesn't even have an
arm that lets him swing across platforms. Instead, your job is to whack
things with a hammer, stand around because you screwed up and now must
wait for your impending death, then die.
9. Anticipation (Nintendo, 1988) — "Ya know what's
wrong with connect the dots?" one producer must have said to another.
"There's not enough Ouija Board in it." And hence, Anticipation was
born. Billing itself as Nintendo's first board game, it asked you to
pass the controller around as you took turns guessing the name of the
connect-the-dots object onscreen through the tedious process of
scrolling through the alphabet and e v e r s o s l o w l y punching in
usually-misspelled guess.
8. Deadly Towers (Broderbund, 1987) — NES games were
notoriously tough, but this one took things overboard. You play as a
dagger-tossing prince who tries to kill impossible-to-kill creatures and
find hidden shops to upgrade his equipment in order to make the
creatures only slightly impossible to kill. In the ages before online
walkthroughs, the only way to progress was to fail miserably for hours
on end, then bang your head against the wall until you hallucinated
success.
7. The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants
(Acclaim, 1991) — Back when The Simpsons was new, I begged my parents
for anything with Bart's face on it, and convinced myself that the
crappy t-shirts, this game and The Simpsons Sing the Blues cassette tape
were all amazing. Hindsight shows us the error of my ways. The
brawler-style side-scroller has almost none of the charm as the far
better arcade game. Awful controls ensure constant death, not only of
your character but your patience.
6. Track & Field II (Konami, 1988) — If there's
one way to simulate the abilities of Olympic athletes, the developers
figured, it was the pounding of the A button until your skin starts to
peel off. No matter whether you choe triple jump, canoeing, pole vault
or any other of the events, your job was to pound that A button to build
up your power level. If you had the NES Max or Advantage controllers,
the game was way too easy. If you used a regular controller, it was
impossible.
5. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (Nintendo, 1988) —
Throwing away most everything that made the original Zelda great, the
slapped-together follow-up finds a tiny Link doll waddling through a
needlessly huge overworld, only to transform into a spindly doofus who
hops through side-scrolling levels when he's confronted with a monster
or enters a town or dungeon. One of the few likenesses to the original
this bastard child keeps is its insistence on stopping you from
progressing unless you dig up items cruelly hidden from you in places
you'd never think to look.
4. Urban Champion (Nintendo, 1986) — The one-on-one
fighter is all about punching, blocking and avoiding falling down a
sewer while dodging flower pots dropped by people who must be annoyed
you couldn't find anything better to play. Your opponent never changes,
you can never move on to a more interesting background and there are no
special moves or even much strategy to put into play. I'm pretty sure
this game was made in 10 minutes on a dare.
3. Bill and Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure
(LJN, 1991) — One way to make your game last longer is to make item you
need to advance impossible to find. Bill and Ted's goes a step farther
by filling each level with crazed enemies you have to avoid, giving you
no time to look for stuff. Each level has a historical figure you need
to find and draw into your time machine with you with one of these
un-findable items by switching between two heroes stuck in parallel
timelines. The game confused me on so many levels.
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Konami, 1989) — No
game inspired as much controller-slamming rage as this brutal
side-scroller. Memories of the water-set disable-the-bomb level still
creep into our nightmares, and thoughts of tangling with the ridiculous
bosses still makes us shudder. This brutal dream crusher was available
on the Wii's Virtual Console but was yanked a few years ago. The official
reason for the disappearance was "licensing issues," but I'd like to
think Konami was just trying to act in the best interests of gamers
everywhere by refusing to let this beast torture them any longer.
1. 10-Yard Fight (Nintendo, 1985) — I'd forgive an
ancient football game for the inability to include the proper number of
players on the field, but it's tougher to overlook forgetting to include
things like correct scoring and plays. This rugby-like abomination
avoids a soundtrack in favor of the repetitive sounds of players'
footsteps and dives. Kickoffs bizarrely pit a 5-player defense against
an all-but unstoppable 9-player return team. Things get easier for the
defense should it be lucky enough to somehow tackle a ball carrier,
because the offense is limited to a triple-option attack that gets fewer
points depending on how long it takes to score. I remember being all
giddy about getting to play football on my NES, only to be crushed
that there was nothing close to football in the game.
