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Friday, September 3, 2010

So what I'm planning on doing here

Hey everyone I just want to thank you for checking out my blog.
Nintendo 64!

First off, a little about me. I am an 18 year old who loves music, sports, and gaming (especially gaming). I've been gaming since I was 6, playing Super Smash Bros, Super Mario 64, Zelda and many more on the N64. I still have that N64 and frequently play 4-player Mario Kart 64 with some of my friends when we're bored and looking for a trip down nostalgia lane. It was a defining part of my childhood and I feel bad for the younger kids that don't get to experience these classics the way I did, which got me thinking...

What about those people older than me? Older than my N64 and my Zelda. What did they have? The NES is not nearly as talked about as the N64, or maybe is that just because I only talk about old games with friends my age? They never played the NES either. So I thought, what the heck, lets try out some of these old games just to see what my older cousins had to deal with growing up.

I've heard of AVGN and his reviews of impossible games, but that's not my goal here. I want to the full experience of the game, see what they were like 5 or more years before I was even born, not simply rage about the difficulty.  I will say what I liked, what I hated and maybe a little more.

**Disclaimer*** I have been told that I will be required to use GameFaqs on a few of these games, as they almost require strategy guides to beat. If I do use a GameFaq, I will post that I used it on that particular blog.

22 comments:

Unknown said...

The NES is definitely talked about more than N64 among my age group, but then I'm 30 ;)

Just read your first couple posts, and its very interesting watching someone nearly half again younger than me going through the games of my youth. Looking forward to more, and if you want some odd classics we played, try Hudson's Adventure Island, Blaster Master, Little Nemo the Dream Master, and Golgo 13. Those should take you off the beaten path of standard classics a bit.

Ryan said...

Thanks for your feedback! That was exactly what I was trying to go for with these. I'm trying not to make it as much of a review as me just giving what my impressions of these older games are and how different they were from my N64 games.
And I certainly take requests, but I've been flooded by them. I think Blaster Master will be tomorrow and I'll definitely check into your other ones

Unknown said...

I'll echo Michael and recommend Little Nemo the Dream Master, and suggest Mega Man 2. They obviously made many of these games. The first one is a little too ancient for my tastes; really, 2 is the standard here. It's another platformer. Great save system, awesome weapons, decent story.

Castlevania might the hardest game ever, but pretty fun.

Original Final Fantasy is interesting, just to see where they started. the 8-bit graphics are stunning :)

Oh, btw. I'm 32. Been a gamer since i was 6 too. I had about the same reaction for the orignal NES as that boy getting the 64 (was that you??)

Ryan said...

It might as well have been haha. No it was a kid that is infamous on YouTube (seach N64 kid)

Peruvian Idol said...

Great idea for a blog! You should check out Golgo 13 if you can find it. That was one of my favorite NES games of all time.

Eric said...

Shadowgate
DeJa Vu
Uninvited
Maniac Mansion
Dragon Warrior IV
Archon
The Three Stooges
Rygar
Mega Man 2
Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest
Mike Tyson's Punch Out!
Duck Tales
Kung Fu
Nightshade

Eric said...

Super Nintendo is REALLY where it's at, though. ;)

Unknown said...

Rygar was cool, another platformer. Punch Out was very very hard too (at the end). Good luck beating that game.

Fernando E said...

Shadowgate and F1: Built to Win.
Awesome concept, and good luck!

Gustav Dahl said...

Interesting. I am 19 and in the same position as you, but the Virtual Console service has helped me playing some of the classics, though mostly on the SNES or N64.

Will be following your journev.

Christine said...

Wow...I got an N64 as a gift when I was 13...but really grew up on NES and SNES.

I'll definitely be following you to get your take!

Sick Daddy said...

Great blog! I remember getting the NES in 1985. Not only were the games tough, there were no places to rent games. You would have to buy the games without any reviews. And if they were easy to beat, with absolutely no replay value, well, that's what you had. There was no saving or savepoints. Game selection to purchase was horrible in smaller cities. I think we had to go out of town just to buy them.

When video stores, usually mom n pop type, before hollywood and blockbuster, started renting games, I recall renting a different one every 2 days.

I would like to see your take on
T&C Surf Design

Unknown said...

Loved the blog, you have a great idea and you have some courage and will to do this : you can be proud to play older games that are classics now and try to understand why they became classics. :)

Hope you will understand more about gaming and eventually found some jewel in 8bit gaming to have fun.

Geoff said...

Hi, just discovered your blog through Dorkly.com. I'm 29 and my first system was an NES. Kids these days have no perspective on video games, so it's really nice to see someone like you giving the old stuff a try. I look forward to reading through all your posts. I have to say though, once you feel like you've played enough NES games, you should definitely move on to the SNES. That has by far the best games of all time (the Zelda, Mario and Metroid games for SNES are especially awesome).

Larissa said...

It's nice to see someone else appreciate old games. I'm 14 and a bunch of me and my friends have been playing a bunch of NES and SNES games lately and some are 20 times better than the Current-Gen games.

Mr Co-Op said...

Oh wow, what an awesome opportunity to show someone else the games we loved as kids.

What would I recommend? Hmm.

Faxanadu
Metroid (already posted)
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
Double Dragon
Mario Bros (where it all began!)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Should keep you occupied for a while.

A big part of all these games is that they existed before there were commonly-available walkthroughs on the internet. It was a big part of each game to have to struggle through working out the correct path.

Punch-out, for example, was all about figuring out what each boxer's "tells" were, dodging their punches, and then going to town on them. Very satisfying at the early stages. At the laters stages, it was very much a test of how good your reflexes were. Even if you knew the "tells", you'd still get clobbered if you weren't fast enough.

Mr Co-Op said...

Should have asked earlier: How are you playing these games? Did you actually find a working NES, or are you playing ports on a PC?

If the latter, I highly recommend you get some form of controller. Playing NES titles on a keyboard or with a mouse just won't do the games justice.

*Klopper, Priscila* said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
*Klopper, Priscila* said...

Man, really?!?!

I'm 19 and I'm from Brazil!!!
Here, our childhood was SNES!!! =O
My mom played Nintendo before I was born!!! ahahah
Me,my bother and sister grew up playing those games =P~

I really like that blog!!!

That's greaaat (Y)

Anonymous said...

Buy the NES Advantage controller- its a must. Back when it came out in the '80s we all basically threw the little controllers that come with the system in the trash.

Unknown said...

I have to say I find it comforting you are doing this, I don't look down on gamers who are younger than me but there are times I might remember an old game while playing a modern take on one and have a sense of fondness. It is almost impossible to communicate that fondness for a series that spent an unusually long hiatus from gaming, many of which who have seen a return with greater or lesser success.

I will echothe need to play Little Nemo. I won't spoil it too much but you are a kid in pajamas stuck in a dream world finding alot of nightmarish cartoony creatures to fend from. As support, you will find some friendly creatures of the dream world often times marked by a snooze bubble over their mouths. It has to be one of the most satisfying Nintendo games I had ever played and felt pretty fortunate to own a copy as a little kid. There was even a theatrical movie made out of it due to its popularity (or marketability rather.) I wish theyd follow it up someday.

I think you should give Zelda II a look, even though it isn't my favorite nintendo game it certainly was a good one.

Paperboy was okay... Ghosts and Goblins was a huge classic as well though a little on the difficult side of things.

Tiny Toon Adventures is easy to overlook but one of the best animated Nintendo games ever. I think you might get a good laugh out of it.

Ninja Turtles is good too but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game was far, far better. The difficulty was pretty consistent and ramped up only a little at a time, which for anything created by Konami is quite an acheviement (think of your list already, about the time you are ready to utter "This game really isn't so ba-" you begin a long journey of wondering if the programmers wore monacles and were themselves the true villains of the videogames you played.)

I also think it might be worth mentioning that while it wasnt a conscious decision of us kiddies from the eighties, that we tended to end up getting an attatchment to specific publishers. My favourite games aside from Nintendo branded ones usually came from Capcom but also could be found from Konami, Acclaim, Midway and this trend died out a little by the era you grew up in even though to a degree it exists today.

Capcom
Megaman
Street Fighter
Little Nemo

Konami
Contra
Metal Gear
Ninja Turtles
Castlevania

These reviews were a treat to read, keep them coming!

Unknown said...

Very nice! I have been wondering if anyone will retrieve and publish on the net their old Commodore 64 games...the ones that are nothing but text roll playing games like depicted in the movie BIG with Tom Hanks.

:oD

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