Thanks NES For All The Memories!

Closing out this 25th B-Day celebration for the NES we have Mega Man 2, Spy Hunter, Punch-Out and at the top a River City Ransom Mod. I think the Spy Hunter, Mega Man 2, and River City Ransom artwork are particularly awesome. Thanks to Joystiq once again for the images seen posted above...and no matter how you celebrated the Nintendo Entertainment System's 25th birthday I very much hope you enjoyed it.

Angel Land?

Well, here is another excellent NES Mod suitable for the system's 25th B-Day celebration! Thanks to Joystiq.com for the above photo of the modded NES depicting the secret ending of Kid Icarus after having been turned into a teenager by Palutena, and just before he gets the kiss.

Nintendo Units Worthy Of The TriForce!

A big thanks to Kotomiblog and Videogameblogger for the above photos of these Legend of Zelda inspired NES mods. A worthy tribute to the 25th B-Day of the system! I'm not sure about the rest of you readers but I wouldn't mind having one of these beauties on my gaming shelf.

Happy B-day to the NES!

Feel that something special in the air? Why that would be millions of excited gamers across the globe as they rise wearily from their beds to discover that the Nintendo Entertainment System has turned 25 years old!

Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, Kid Icarus, Duck Hunt, Metroid, and Legend of Zelda to name only a few of the early titles that I burned hundreds of hours playing in my youth. Good memories.

Of course how does one celebrate a day like this? Well, you can do what I'm going to do and play some M.U.L.E. but I personally think that should be done everyday. I guess I'll just have to browse this crazy series of tubes to find suitable photos worthy of the 25th birthday celebration of a classic gaming system.

A big thanks to Kotaku for the heads up and to Smithore.com which is just an incredibly awesome site about M.U.L.E. so make sure to head over there and give them a look!

Pardon me but I need more tea and I should see if the Vault has anymore of the Nintendo cereal in stock.

Box Art Wednesday.

Another Box Art Wednesday and we have a collection of NES titles that I've in the past like to classify as shelf warmers from back in the days when I worked at a local video store. The NES titles that you could always no matter if it was Christmas break find in the exact same spot on the shelf.

Bee 52 was developed by Code Masters and released by Camerica in 1992. You take on the role of Bee #52 in this flying side scrolling as you navigate the obstacles that come your way, you can also fire straight ahead with the A button and with the B button you will sting the enemies below you. Check out the video below thanks to Nesguide.com!


Is Best of the Best: Championship Karate based off the 1989 movie starring James Earl Jones, Eric Roberts, Chris Penn, and Sally Kirkland? I'm not sure but the game came out in 1992 so I guess it could possibly be meant to ride the coattails of that popular VHS tape back in the day. Of course the title's original name was Panza Kick Boxing...so maybe not. NesGuide.com comes to our rescue again with the video below!


Finally we have Crystal Mines, developed by Color Dreams in 1989. I've mentioned before that since Color Dreams didn't offer officially licensed NES games they had to reverse engineer the machine to get past it's "lock out" chip. I've never played this title though I do like the box art with the robot and the Earth Golem looking very much like it has just been woken up with the mining machine on its back. Once more let us all give a big thanks to Nesguide.com for the video posted below!

Great Scott!

Remember how bad the Back to the Future game was for the Nintendo Entertainment System? I know I sure do...collecting bowling balls indeed. Sigh. Luckily the fine fellows at Telltale Games are bringing us a new Back to the Future title with Bob Gale as consultant on the characters and storyline (a good thing since he co-wrote and was co-creator of the original trilogy) with Christopher Lloyd performing as Dr. Emmet Lathrop Brown, at least vocally. Though if you look at the photo sent to Kotaku up above it doesn't seem like he is just reading his lines does it?

To say I am excited by this bit of news is an understatement. Look for the first chapter in this episodic game to debut next year for most gaming platforms!

Some More Saturday Supercade!

How awesome would a John Carter: Warlord of Mars 8-Bit game have been back in the day? Thanks to the talent of Jason Green we can now imagine what it would have been like to sit in the floor and tap furiously at the NES controller as you try to best Tars Tarkas at the end of Level 1-1. Yeah, yeah, I know they didn't really fight but this was the NES era after all where you originally were going to have to fight the Dianoga in one level of the Super Star Wars game!

A big thanks to Super Punch for the heads up on this artwork!

"That was just a game, Centauri!"

I've mention on this blog before that during my high-school years I had a very good relation with my local video store, enough so that I could call in on Wednesday afternoon and they would cheerfully tell me what games had come in and which they had pulled for me to play. One such afternoon I was excited to hear that they had got in the Last Starfighter for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I almost dropped the phone I was so shocked...six years after the movie I was finally going to get my chance at piloting a Gunstar and taking on Xur and the Ko-Dan armada!

It was a long three hours until I was able to get home and have my father drive me up to the store so I could rent it. On the way back I was humming the Last Starfighter theme, what movie besides Tron so captured the dreams of an 80's game like the Last Starfighter had back in 1984?

Boy my dreams were crushed shortly after inserting the cartridge into the machine and giving it a play. Turns out that Mindscape pulled a fast one on us Starfighter fans...it was actually a Commodore 64 title called Uridium with a new title screen, music from the movie, and reworked sprites to resemble a Gunstar and the Kodan warships. It was a big disappointment to say it lightly, the play controls were horrible, and the game was in truth pretty dang hard.




In a fit of disgust I ejected the game and took it back to the video store quite hastily. Luckily they had a copy of Castlevania II in and I spent the weekend making ghouls and skeletons pay for Mindscape's crimes.

Some interesting bits of info from the Wikipedia:

"A real The Last Starfighter arcade game by Atari, Inc. is promised in the end credits, but was never released. If released, the game would have been Atari's first 3D polygonal arcade game to use a Motorola 68000 as the CPU. Gameplay would have been taken from game scenes and space battle scenes in the movie and would have included the same controller that was used on the first Star Wars arcade game. Ultimately, it was not released because the arcade machine would have had a sale price of $10,000, which the vice president in Atari considered too high.

Home versions of the game for the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit home computers were also developed, but never commercially released under the Last Starfighter name. The home computer version was eventually renamed and released (with some minor changes) as Star Raiders 2. A protype exists for the Atari 2600 Last Starfighter game, which was in actuality a game already in development by Atari under the name Universe. This game was eventually released as Solaris."

Well, maybe someday I'll finally get that chance to pilot a Gunstar...because there is that rumor that a sequel to the Last Starfighter is in the works.

Ballad of A Well-Known Gun - Elton John

End Of Line.

We here at the Victory Pellet Vault know just what you need, yes indeed, and it is naturally not on this site.

However if you have a spare $250.00 then you might want to head over to the Thretris site to pick up your very own Tron inspired NES. From their own website:

"

This original NES has been custom painted using a special blacklight reactive glow paint. The NES will glow in a blacklight VERY brightly, and will also charge up with light and glow without blacklight (just not as bright)

The NES has also been fitted with one of low-gain's NESmods, which adds dual 1/4" audio outputs to the back of the NES providing an amplified stereo like sound (split mono channels)

Also has BRIGHT blue power LED

NES comes with Original Power adaptor, RF switch, and original controller."

Head over to http://thretris.bigcartel.com/product/glowing-tron-nes and check out the video they've kindly included.

A big thanks to Kotaku for the heads up.

Unforgettable - Nat "King" Cole

So Every Princess Is To Be Named Zelda?

In my youth I was lucky enough to make friends with the youngest son of my Grandparents best friends. His name was Ross and even though he was 9 years my senior he was an avid Weird Science reader as well as a huge early console and PC fan. So on Saturday nights I would go with my Grandparents to play bingo at a small town social every week and then afterward we would spend a couple of hours at Ross's house where I would peruse his mass collection of Atari 2600, Intellivision, and PC floppy disks.

So as I grew older our mutual interest in gaming led to us both swapping NES titles every weekend and since Ross had a full time job he was able to secure the newer games as they came out. We both went nuts over the original Legend of Zelda but when the sequel, The Adventure of Link, came out...he was disappointed by the complete change in gameplay from its predecessor. So much so that he flat out gave me his copy of Zelda II.

I didn't get a chance to play the game upon going home and had to wait until Sunday morning until I was able to once more step into Link's shoes and live a life of high adventure in the land of Hyrule. Though come the morn I found I took to the title like a fish to water and was shocked to hear the next day at school as I was going on about the game that my fellow students hated it so much. What was it about the game that I was digging that so many others weren't?

From the Wiki regarding the story of the Advenure of Link:

"

Six years after the events of The Legend of Zelda, the now sixteen year old Link notices a strange mark on the back of his left hand, exactly like the crest of Hyrule. He seeks out Impa, who responds by taking Link to the North Castle, where a door has been magically sealed for generations. Impa places the back of Link's left hand on the door, and it opens, revealing a sleeping maiden. Impa tells Link that the maiden is Zelda, the princess of Hyrule from long ago, and the origin of the "Legend of Zelda." Zelda's brother had tried to force her into telling their recently deceased father's secrets concerning the last of three sacred golden triangle treasures of his kingdom, known collectively as the Triforce. Princess Zelda refused to reveal its location, and the prince's wizard friend, in anger, tried to strike her down with a spell. Zelda fell under a powerful sleeping spell, but it also resulted in the wizard's own death. The prince, unable to reverse the spell, had his sister placed in the castle tower, in the hope that she would one day be awakened. He decreed that princesses born to the royal family from that point on would be named Zelda, in remembrance of this tragedy.

Impa says that the mark on Link's hand means that he is the hero chosen to awaken Zelda. She gives Link a chest containing six crystals and ancient writings that only a great future king of Hyrule can read. Link can read it and it indicates that each crystal needs to be placed in a different palace in Hyrule. This will open the way to the Great Palace, which contains the TriForce of Courage. This, combined with the other two parts, has the power to awaken the enchanted Zelda. Taking the crystals, Link sets out to restore them to their palaces. Meanwhile, the followers of Gannon are seeking to kill Link; sprinkling his blood on Ganon’s ashes would bring Ganon back to life."

Doing a little research shows that 1-up.com has a score of 65/100 and Gamespot bestows 69/100 on The Adventure of Link. IGN gives it a 70/100 and Nintendo Power 72/100.

So what say you? Is the negative reception to the game in fact because the gameplay had changed? Perhaps the title is considered too difficult? Is the storyline just too crazy to comprehend?

Night Moves - Bob Seger

Box Art Wednesday.

Today's Box Art Wednesday for the NES is brought to you by the letter A!

Song For Ten - Neil Hannon

Still more Saturday Supercade!

How do you make a Duck Tales shirt even cooler? By making it a shirt of Scrooge McDuck from the NES game is how!

Thanks to 80's Tees for the pic above.

"I think we're gonna need a helmet."

In the summer of 1991 I knew that everyone in the whole country was finally going to fall in love with Dave Stevens The Rocketeer like I had a few years earlier. That was not to be. It would seem that a little movie called T2 would squash everything around that year. At the very least we fans of the Rocketeer received a sweet and charming movie. Still...I can't help but always wonder what future stories we could have thrilled to on the silver screen if T2 had opened up maybe a month later.

But for fans of Cliff Secord (The Rocketeer) we did get a few things, some 'toys', new collectibles to put on the shelf, and not one but two games to play in our off hours. I've talked about the Super Nintendo/PC version on an earlier post but today my tongue is wagging about the NES offering.

The Rocketeer NES game is a 2-D side scrolling platformer like most games of that time and mostly followed the plot of the movie. It was also a tough game to complete. It probably would have helped if your X-3 jetpack would have handled a little better in the game. It's tough trying to sling some lead at a Nazi or gangster when you have to worry about slamming into every thing above your head with the jetpack engaged.

I was treated to a scene of Cliff Secord being gunned down against a wall many, many times when I played it originally. I remember pretty vividly the quizzical expression upon my face when playing the game at your choice of weapons that the Rocketeer could use:

1) Fist
2) Pistol
3) Tommy Gun (Cool.)
4) Spread Gun (Wait a minute...)
5) Grenades (What?)
6) Bazooka (All right now, Bandai just went crazy when they designed this!)
7) Laser Death Ray
8) Tactical Nuke

Okay...those last two I admit I made up. But you can see how some of these weapon selections do not quite fit into the Rocketeer's universe. So to end this post I have decided to try something a little new and give the game a rating on 1 to 10 scale.

Rocketeer (NES)
7.5

For your viewing pleasure I present the Rocketeer NES game television commercial...which I'm pretty sure I've never seen until today.

Ah, crap! Jumbo is down!

Yeah...how long has it been since you've sniped a terrorist through a window with Mike or had Jumbo shot down in the bright glare of spotlights?