Peripheral Vision: NES Advantage
When I was a kid I remember having my first encounter with a turbo NES controller and wanting one of my own immediately. At this point we didn’t have Gamestop or FuncoLand yet, but we did have a local chain of used video game stores, whose name I’ve forgotten over the years. One sunny Saturday morning, while my mother grocery shopped at the adjacent grocery store, I walked into the gaming store and took a look around. After browsing the games I walked up to the counter and asked if they had any turbo controllers for the NES. What the employee plunked down on the counter was the most amazing controller I had ever seen.
It was an NES Advantage, and my tiny little, childhood mind was about to explode. The controller was almost as big as the NES console itself, and the employee explained how it all worked. Not only does the NES Advantage have turbo, but you can choose to engage it for A or B, or both, and dial in the exact amount of turbo you need. Right away my child’s mind was alight with all the fun this controller and I were about to have. It has adjustable turbo, slow motion, you can select player 1 or 2, and it has a joystick. The best part though was that it can be placed anywhere and used like a real arcade joystick. I was sold, and I bought it immediately!
At that time I owned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game, and I remember how much better that game was with an NES Advantage. I also owned almost every WWF game on the NES, and again the Advantage seemed to make those games more fun. The NES Advantage also helped me play Gyromite without every having R.O.B., but I might write about that in another piece soon. I loved my NES Advantage, but as things changed I became more a fan of the Sony Playstation. I tried to trade in my NES and Sega Genesis, which is a [horror] story in and of itself, thus the NES Advantage was gone. For years I used the NES Max and a third-part turbo controller I had bought a year or so after buying the Advantage, but it wasn’t the same.
After being screwed over by a horrible trade in scam at FuncoLand, my NES collection was significantly smaller. At that point I packed away my NES collection and turned to emulation to scratch the itch for the NES days in my life. I never really thought much about the Advantage or felt the need to buy another one. That all changed in 2010, when I decided to start seriously collecting for the NES. I turned to online auctions and found one for a very reasonable buy it now price and made the purchase. After a few weeks of waiting the seller contacted me and said they had forgotten to ship it, and as an apology they packed in a second Advantage and shipped them both immediately. When they arrived they were both in good shape, except one of them has a weird issue where it presses buttons without me actually pressing the button. Either way, I was playing my NES games like I did in the good old days.
As time has passed I found myself wanting to use the NES Advantage less, because of its size. I found a third-party turbo controller and stuck with that for all of my turbo needs on the NES. Although I still retain those memories of using my NES Advantage to beat TMNT II the Arcade Game on Thanksgiving as a little kid, now I just prefer something a little simpler when I need a turbo NES controller. These days I prefer to have them around for the nostalgia and collection factor, more so than functional usage. I even own a Camerica Supersonic, but since it’s wireless and I don’t own the receiver I’ll never be able to use it. The NES Advantage was such an amazing controller, so much so the Ghostbusters used it to control the Statue of Liberty, and to be perfectly honest I’m kind of sad I outgrew it.
Video Games Based on Obscure Movies
Throughout video gaming history there have been many video games based on movies. In many cases movie based video games target an audience who are already familiar with, and probably already fans of, the source material that gave the video game its title. In some rare cases a movie based video game can be based upon something more obscure or older than the player, or the video games itself, leaving the player unfamiliar with its source material, or origins.
A personal example would be one of my favorite original Playstation games: The Italian Job. The year was around 2002, and I was buying up as many inexpensive PSone games as I possibly could. I liked having variety in my collection, but I would be remiss if I didn’t admit the factor that played heavily into these purchases was that these games were selling for probably less than the cellophane they were wrapped in just to make room for PS2 games.
As a kid my family never went to the movies and we rarely ever paid much attention to VHS releases. When I was a kid, the only way I saw a movie was the, often times heavily censored, version that was the weekend matinee on the basic TV channels we had. We never had cable either. So when I found a game called The Italian Job that looked like Driver, but with Mini Coopers, and was published by Rockstar games, the company behind Grand Theft Auto, I was sold, but knew absolutely nothing about the source material this game was based on.
The following year a film bearing the same name was set to be released, but it looked nothing like the video game I was playing. As the commercials for the new movie by the same name started appearing on TV I decided to hit the internet and find out what exactly this video game was based on and why there was a new movie using its name. It didn’t take long for me to find out The Italian Job was a cherished classic from a bygone era, starring Michael Caine. This resulted in me purchasing a copy of the DVD and loving the movie, as well as giving further context to the video game. A video game based on the new movie was released, but I would dare say neither the new movie or its video game are anywhere near as good as the originals.
Another example would be Starsky and Hutch on the Gamecube (also available on the PS2 and Xbox). I was familiar with Starsky and Hutch, as it was played on a local channel at 5am, but I had never sat down and actually watched the show for very long, just bits and pieces. The comedic movie version was set to be released the following year but, yet again, a video game based on the original version was released beforehand. Admittedly loosely based on the original TV show, it turned out to be a fairly ok game, while no further version was needed for the comedic movie.
A perhaps weak examples might be The Three Stooges on the NES. I’m not sure how popular they were when this game was released. The NES game was released some seventeen years after the final episode of The Three Stooges. Maybe they were still popular in this era, or maybe there were a lot of kids scratching their heads when they saw this on the shelves in toy stores.
One of my favorite examples is Chapolim x Drácula, which is a ROM hack of Ghost House for the Sega Master system, but released on physical cartridges in Brazil. The game is based on a Latin American character by the name of El Chapulín Colorado, portrayed by the late, great Roberto Gómez Bolaños (aka Chespirito). From what I understand a Brazilian company secured the rights to produce their own Sega products within the country to keep costs affordable to the citizens and somewhere therein this game was born. I would love to have a copy of the game myself, but I’m not sure many, if any, have left Brazil.
I’m sure in most cases everyone is familiar with the Duck Tales and the Rescue Rangers and the Tail Spins from the Disney Afternoon lineup of cartoons. It’s the obscure things, at least to me, that cause me to research the source material, and learning more about it that I enjoy. As with The Italian Job, I had played through the game and enjoyed it without knowing anything at all about it, but once I watched the movie I could pick out what each situation was based on and recall the movie scene in my mind, which added to the enjoyment of the game overall. Sure, sometimes games are loosely based on the title they spawned from, but in some cases having the knowledge of where they came from can add a bit more excitement and enjoyment to the overall experience.
TVG Repair: NES Controller IC Replacement
Back when I was thrifting regularly I found NES controllers quite frequently, so I would pick them up for, at the very least, tradable assets. NES controllers were designed and built to last forever, or so it seemed until I found, ironically, an NES dog bone controller with actual dog chew marks on it. I originally figured something inside of the controller had been severed, or maybe the cable was snapped internally, so I went to work testing a few theories I had. Since the dog bone NES controllers have cables that detach from the internal board I swapped them around with a few other dog bone controllers I have, which quickly debunked any bad cable theory.
I continued to painstakingly check over the board for broken traces or cracks, of which there were none. The only thing I could think of was that maybe the shift register IC had gone bad, so I took one out of a regular NES controller and soldered it into the chewed up dog bone controller. That’s all it took! The controller worked flawlessly once the IC was swapped out. I did try the IC in the rectangle controller and now it too was completely dead. I found it odd that the IC was dead, as it showed no signs of damage be it physical or liquid. For years that poor controller that gave its brain for the greater good to bring back a chewed up dog bone controller has sat in a box, and weighed heavily on my mind, so I decided it was time to bring the poor little thing back to life.
As I was purchasing some other electronics parts I decided to check the website I was purchasing from, Tayda Electronics, for the 4021 Shift Register I was needing, and much to my joy they have them for 37 cents. Once my purchase had come in I was excited to bring this controller back to life. Sure, it’s a normal, abundant NES controller, but this one is kind of a hero in my eyes, as it gave its brain to save a dog bone controller. From soldering in the new IC to testing the controller the whole process only took a minute or two, and the controller now works perfectly.
I’m still not sure what made the original IC fail in the dog bone controller as it showed no signs of damage, but the controller was chewed up, so I’ll just consider the mystery solved. I’m also not sure how often NES controllers have their ICs go bad on them, whether randomly or through genuine damage. Regardless I’m pretty happy to say that a 37 cent part and a few minutes worth of work brought it back to life. Again, I know NES controllers are abundant, but I hope that not too many of them have been thrown away or destroyed due to what is a fairly simple repair. After all, it was through these controllers we all once went on some of the greatest adventures of our lives, and maybe even still through these controllers there are great adventures yet to come.
NES Point and Click Games
As I’ve mentioned before I was always late to the party when it came to video games and video game technology. Our first family computer had Windows 3.1 for the OS, but this was well into the lifespan of Windows 95. We did eventually upgrade, but along the adventure I remember a lot of software being handed down from my more tech savvy relatives. Some of these games were point and click adventure games, one of them being Leisure Suit Larry which was quickly snatched up and thrown away by my mother once she figured out what it was all about.
Fast forward to the year 2000 when I was more focused on the NES and trying to find out which games were worth buying by testing them through emulation. Although primitive by today’s standards the emulators in those days seemed like modern miracles; being able to play any NES game you could ever imagine on a computer was amazing. After finding a list of every NES game ever released I trundled through the list to see which games might spark my interest. It didn’t take long for my past and present to meet up when I found a game called Deja Vu.
By this time I was more interested in games like Super Mario and Final Fantasy, since these games gave instant feedback when a button was pressed. Point and click had kind of fallen by the wayside, but I decided to give Deja Vu a try. It wasn’t long before I was hooked by the story, searching for clues and loving every bit of it. I didn’t complete the game, for one reason or another, but I do remember it feeling odd to play a point and click game on (an emulator of) the NES and it feeling so smooth and well done. What I thought would be clunky controls, certainly weren’t.
A few years later I found there were a few other point and click games for the NES, such as Maniac Mansion. Maniac Mansion was a game I had heard of, mostly due to the hamster part, but had never actually played, not even on PC. I tried giving Maniac Mansion a try but for some reason I just couldn’t get into it and I honestly don’t know why. Now that I actually own a copy of Maniac Mansion I might sit down and give it an actual try.
In the years since then I’ve found many more games such as King’s Quest V were released for the NES, as well as some games that incorporate point and click elements such as Dr. Chaos and The Goonies (both one and two). As these games include platforming and other elements I wouldn’t classify them as strictly point and click, but a hybrid of platforming with point and click elements thrown in, and I believe they are done very well too.
Initially, probably like most people, when I thought of the NES I thought Super Mario, Tetris, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Castlevania, etc. After playing Deja Vu I try to include these games into the fold as well. It’s easy to forget how experimental the NES was when platformers and RPGs took over, but there are definitely some great games with gameplay elements that aren’t jumping over mushrooms or punching in someone’s face and collecting the coins that bounce where their corpse once laid before it quickly decayed and disappeared. Deja Vu, Maniac Mansion, Shadowgate and Uninvited, among others, are all games that I may have missed out on, had I not given NES point and click games a chance.
Overpriced or Justified: Expensive NES Games
In the 25 years or so I’ve been collecting video games, rarity and value only started to factor in about ten years ago. I started collecting as a kid, buying or trading for old games from other kids in the neighborhood. I would keep the games I liked and trade away the others to places like FuncoLand. Around 2010 vintage gaming became a more popular hobby, and in some cases a business. At that time it wasn’t uncommon to walk into a flea market and see a $30 copy of Gyromite or even 10 Yard Fight locked away behind glass as if they were Smeagol’s precious.
In many situations it was obvious these were people who had read one of the many extremely misleading click bait article about NES games selling for tens of thousands of dollars, so these people rifled through old boxed, found NES games and wanted to cash out their old, forgotten tokens. What piqued my interested though were the games with titles I had never heard of before that were actually fetching high prices. Admittedly I don’t know every game in the NES library, but I once held an arrogant notion that if I hadn’t heard of a game before it must not be worth playing. Now that I’m older, and maybe a little bit wiser, I feel I should take some time to challenge younger me and see whether some of the more valuable NES games that I own are overpriced or worth what they’re selling for.
Now I fully acknowledge many factors go into a game’s value, but I will be basing my opinion mostly on playing the game. These won’t be in-depth reviews of the games either, I will just play through the game until I get bored or have to stop myself.
One of the earliest examples of a game with what I considered to be a high price tag is Casino Kid 2. The first time I ran across this game I thought to myself “Well this person has clearly lost their mind.”. After checking ebay prices and seeing sold listing matching what the seller was asking I started to wonder what made this game so pricey. Lucky for me I found a copy that was sorely under priced and I snatched it up. Casino Kid 2’s value has gone up considerably since that time and I still haven’t done anything with the game beyond putting it into my collection. So let’s see what it’s like.
Casino Kid 2 was released in 1993, which means this game probably hit shelves with very little, if any, marketing behind it. The story is about a champion gambler from the US who now must fly all around the world to challenge other top gamblers in other countries. If you run out of money, it’s game over. Now I know next to nothing about gambling but even I know you don’t gamble with a machine because the machine controls the rules and what is dealt, so clearly I went into this game with a purely opened mind.
I hated it!
I just don’t find gambling fun. The truth about gambling is that it’s not about about winning, it’s about getting you addicted to losing your money. Maybe if I understood gambling I might enjoy this game, but as it stands now I just didn’t. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and it just felt like a tug of war that only ended when I reset the game to try one of the other gamblers. I guess I could say I took a gamble in buying this cartridge and even though I paid a small fraction of what they are valued at, I still feel like I lost. My only regret is I didn’t get to eat at the $2 casino buffet.
Another game that I noticed creeping up in price, but was quite well documented around the time I started factoring in rarity and value, is Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers 2. Being a Capcom game you know this one is going to be great quality, but I question whether it’s all that different from the first one. Does this game get its price tag from a case of late release, or is this game really that far superior to its first release, and much of the NES library?
To fully understand what I was getting myself into I first played the original Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers and it is actually quite fun, as I knew a Capcom game would be. Doing this gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect from Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers 2. As far as gameplay goes they both feel very similar, but the graphics in the second are vastly improved. Controls are very responsive, I would say maybe the second one has a slight bit of an edge and tune up when it comes to maneuverability. At first I felt like I was just aimlessly going through screens collecting R/R squares with very little resistance until I got to a boss, but the more I played the game the more I started to enjoy it. Is Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers 2 worth the asking price? If you want a similar experience with slightly lower graphics you’ll do perfectly fine with the first. That’s not to say the second isn’t a good game, I just don’t see it being a worth what it’s selling for online good game.
I’m a bit disappointed by Casino Kid 2 because Sofel also released Wall Street Kid, which I enjoyed. I’m just simply not a gambler and I know better than to gamble with something that knows the rules and is programmed to make you lose. Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers 2 wasn’t a disappointment though, and I’m glad I picked it up all those years ago. Again, I don’t see either of these games being worth their asking price based solely on their game play, but I do understand scarcity has caused people to value them highly. Don’t get me wrong, I too fall into the pit of being glad I own these games, even if I’ll never touch Casino Kid 2 ever again. If I didn’t own either of these games and my only options were to pay market value or go without, I feel I would be perfectly fine playing the first Rescue Rangers and never knowing Casino Kid 2 even existed.
River City Ransom
I think it’s time we discuss one of the best NES games ever created, River City Ransom. To do justice to this NES masterpiece I feel we must first pay our respects to the company who created it, Technōs Japan. Technōs Japan is responsible for so many NES classics, but most notably they created the Kunio-kun series, which still lives on today even though sadly the company does not. The North American market saw some, but not all of the games in this series. The ones we did manage to get are some of my favorite games on the console, including Nintendo World Cup Soccer, Super Dodge Ball, Crash ‘N the Boys Street Challenge and of course River City Ransom.
River City Ransom is a non-linear beat em up style game with some RPG elements thrown in. The main story follows Alex and Ryan as they fight their way across River City in an attempt to rescue Ryan’s girlfriend Cyndi who is being held captive inside River City High by the game’s villain, Slick. Along the journey they’re forced to fight through various gang territories as well as face several gang leaders which act as mini bosses. In summation you punch and kick your way through parts of town on a mission to save your girlfriend while collecting bouncing coins dropped by thugs to purchase items to increase your skills to defeat even tougher thugs.
One of my favorite aspects of River City Ransom is that the player can move anywhere on the screen, horizontally or vertically. That level of freedom in an NES game was a big deal back then. Each screen will spawn thugs from a variety of gangs in the game. Some of them will even wield weapons such as brass knuckles, baseball bats (both wooden and aluminum), chains, wheels, trash cans and sometimes even fallen comrades will be used to try and stop Alex and Ryan. Progressing forward or going backwards doesn’t require defeating the thugs on the screen, so running away like a wimp is fully supported in River City Ransom. At the end of some screens will be a boss for one of the gangs you’ve been fighting. These mini bosses are usually just a little bit harder than the thugs you’ve been fighting, but the further you progress the tougher they become.
From time to time you will enter different towns in which you can purchase food that will replenish your health and add additional points into stats. There will also be stores to buy self help books that will increase your fighting abilities. One town even offers a spa where you can see the main character’s pixelated derriere, which was always hilarious to see as a kid. To save all your progress River City Ransom offers a password system to keep track of your character’s progress through the game. I’ve previously voiced my hatred for this system as there are a few characters that can easily be confused while writing them down, as well as requiring so many characters in general that writing the whole password down could take up half the night after you’ve already put so many hours into the game.
River City Ransom is a fun challenge, as well as fun and funny in general. This game has given young me so many hours, if not days of enjoyment fighting the different thugs and reading their cries after I’ve kicked their faces in. To this day the bouncing coin sound is still in the memory banks in my head. I have to confess that I’ve never beaten River City Ransom. I know, I know, but hear me out. With as open world as this game is and as much as I truly, deeply and seethingly hate the game’s password system, I never bothered to write them down. I simply started from scratch and played a few hours of beat up the thug who cries for his mother, catch the bouncing coins and ask the cute girl in the burger shop for a smile over and over again, it was that simple. Even without having beaten the game all the way through I still stand by the statement that River City Ransom is one of the greatest NES games ever created.
Rockin Kats for the NES
In 1991 the good people of Atlus released a game by the name of N.Y. Nyankies for the Famicom in Japan. Later that year North America would receive it as Rockin’ Kats. When I finally got my hands on a copy of Rockin’ Kats, many years later, I remember loving it right from the start. At its core the game is a platformer much the same as the Super Mario Bros. series, but Rockin’ Kats brought its own style to the genre and added aspects that made it feel completely unique.
In Rockin Kats the player takes control of a blue cat by the name of Willy. Willy is a young jazz musician in New York City with the nickname of The Rockin’ Kat. To add a goal to the game, Willy’s girlfriend Jill has been kidnapped by the local crime boss, Mugsy. Willy must now fight through different levels, armed only with his punch gun. The levels are presented in a television channel like system, rather than linear levels, with varying themes, opponents, mini bosses and bosses. Ultimately Willy must rescue his love Jill and defeat Mugsy.
In total there are five stages, with the first four stages being playable in any order. The fifth and final stage becomes available once the other four have been defeated. There is also a shopping channel where the player can buy bonus items with the cash they’ve obtained throughout the game to help them throughout any of the other stages. If the cash found in any given stage isn’t enough, there is also a bonus channel with mini games for additional cash and extra lives, however in this case it takes money to make money. Rockin’ Kats also offers a fairly simple password feature to keep the progress players have put their time and effort into.
Once Mugsy is defeated and launched into outer space, Willy and Jill are reunited, but that’s not the end of the story. Although peace has been restored, after the credits roll, Mugsy will challenge the player to one more time around. You can choose to stop before the credits, as you did beat the game, but the added bonus is a way to get just a little more play out of this game.
Rockin’ Kats isn’t really a challenging game, but some aspects can be a bit tricky for the player during a first time play through. Learning to use the punch gun is key to mastering the various ways it can help the player defeat bosses and master level environments. The levels aren’t all that long either, but the mini boss and boss fights can take a little time to learn their patterns. Rockin’ Kats is a game I played and replayed so many times as a kid. I’ve seen a few people talk about it, but not as much as I really think this game deserves. I feel Rockin’ Kats is an absolute NES classic and should be talked about far more than it currently is.
