Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Ducks. Really?







See that last picture above this text? Get used to that screen if you decide to brave the soul crushing NES game, Silver Surfer.
Long have comic fans dreamed of wielding the awesome might of the Power Cosmic, rightfully so as it awe inspiring abilities have thrilled readers of the Silver Surfer comic for many a year. Too bad that the designers of the NES game didn't realize that it might upset fans of the character if he were to be relegated to merely throwing white balls of light and that the Surfer's legendary stamina was brought low by a...duck. Yes, a duck. If you happen to connect with anything in the game as you are flying the Surfer is toppled from his board and you get to start the level over.


For Villains you get to go against the likes of the Emperor of the Skrulls, Firelord (Isn't he a herald of Galactus too?), Mephisto, Reptyl, and the Possessor. Now I really do not know who the Possessor is...I will let you more educated readers in the sequential arts fill us in.
Now these aren't really the worse of bad guys I guess but considering that Galactus at the beginning of the game sends you to combat the evil of the Magik Domain...you have to wonder what they have to do with the realms of Magik. I can kind of see Mephisto rearing his head in all of this but Reptyl?


But wait...there is yet another villain that must be conteded with in your quest...the mastermind of all this threat. That villain would be...Mister Sinister. Now how come the powers at be that created this game decided to use an X-men villain instead of the likes of Thanos is beyond me. Further more what he has to do with the Magik Domain is equally obtuse.
The Silver Surfer NES game has the distinction of being one of the hardest games for that system but that title comes from it being a broken game not in the skill required to play it.

2 comments:

Dax said...

The most disappointed I've ever been with a game. As a big Silver Surfer fan I was amazed at the very existence of a Surfer video game...

...and then I got knocked off my board by a fish. We're talking about a guy who can fly through stars, and a fish jumps up and knocks him off his board.

The game was made during the time of the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers/early Ron Lim era of the comic, so it had all sorts of guys who had shown up in that (Reptyl, the Skrulls, Firelord, etc), but Mister Sinister makes absolutely no sense, yeah. Plus, at that point I think Mr Sinister had only shown up in a couple of X-Men comics at that.

The Possessor is an Elder of the Universe who runs around in a raggy gown and a blindfold, and has a funky staff with a lion head on top. He's kind of like the ultimate librarian.

Yeah, I said that.

As far as the Majik Domain...

...I might conjecture that they're talking about the alternate universe that Master Order and Lord Chaos rule, which is supposed to be filled with magic. It's some of that crazy, psuedo-metaphysical jazz that Englehart's comic book plots are known for. But the only representatives of that universe are the In-Betweener and Order and Chaos, so what the other "bosses" are doing in the game makes no sense comic-wise.

They could also be talking about the place that the New Mutant Magik ran, but that would make even less sense for a Silver Surfer game.

And...I'm done now.

Vic Sage said...

It's a bad game and I'm a bad blogger for raising up these memories. Ha, ha.

I remember you and your father coming into the store to rent it. You should have stuck to the Punisher NES game.