Hello, my name's Adam and I'm an NESaholic. I've been a NESaholic since Christmas 1986 when my mother got me an NES. After 23 years or so of being a NESaholic the keg has almost run dry and I'm scrounging the stale dregs at the bottom of other people's bottles in hope of downing every last drop of NESahol that I can possibly find.
It started out innocently enough. I had the Intellivision and Colecovision when I was younger and played games like any other child would. The Nintendo came out in '85 and a few kids in my school were lucky enough to get one. I recall not having much interest in it at the time. I was heavily into Star Wars, GI Joe and Transformers toys at the time, so video games were in the background. Then came the birthday party.
About 10 of us were invited to a friend's birthday bash. We watched him open his toys while we kicked back and had a few...chocolate milks or something. It was his last gift that hooked me. Was that the new Nintendo he just opened? Why does it come with a robot? His dad hooked it up and we instantly became swallowed up by Super Mario Brothers. The birthday party became less about Dennis (the birthday boy) and more about who's turn it was to play. I got to play as the green guy (Luigi) and suddenly I knew I needed to have this.
It took almost a year but I finally did get it for Christmas in '86. I spent hours playing and beat Super Mario Brothers the 3rd or 4th day I had it. I remembered being amazed that the game had an ending message. I had never seen one of those. The other 3 games I got, Baseball, Gyromite and Duck Hunt were all ok, but SMB was simply amazing. I played the hell out of the game and didn't get another game until the summer of '86, when I saved up enough money from my job bussing tables to purchase Ikari Warriors. I played the hell out of it, using the ABBA code to infiltrate deep into the game, but was stopped short of getting a satisfying end by some zombie looking dude sitting at a desk with missiles raining down on me. I died there because the game doesn't let you use ABBA at that part of the game, but I knew there had to be more...there had to be an ENDING!
Years go by and I get games for my birthday and buy a few myself, including Legend of Kage, Legacy of the Wizard, Rygar, Milon's Secret Castle, Blaster Master...the list goes on. Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy suck me into the RPG genre and one day at Toys R Us a cool looking "RPG" shows up called Nobunaga's Ambition. It retails for around $70, the most expensive game I've ever seen, so it must be good! I save up the $$ and make the proud purchase, only to get home and find out...it's different. I try to like the game but can't. Peasants revolt, plague strikes my prefecture, I get wiped out in battle... I paid $70 for this?? This is my Chinese water torture and that, my friends, was my first experience with Koei.
Towards the end of high school and into college I rented games at an alarming rate and finished most of them. I'd get coupons for the local video store where you could rent 3 games for $5, almost always beating the trifecta, except for the random Dragon Power or RoboWarrior debacles. Every time I beat one I would write it down in my notebook and also write what I did to beat the game (ie "Killed Dracula" for Castlevania). Yes folks, the social life wasn't exactly blooming in those days, though college did break open my social life.
College ended in 1995 and I still enjoyed playing the NES after almost 10 years. I had gotten a SNES and Genesis and enjoyed those games a lot, but the NES still felt like home. The games were simple and didn't blow you away, but man were they fun and had a ton of character. However, I started paying more attention to the 2-bit ho's than the 8-bit games and eventually I got married in 1999 to my beautiful wife Amy. After 5 years we were finally blessed with twins, Ava and Aidan. My gaming time in this period dropped considerably for obvious reasons, but every once in awhile I would find time to get into a new game when everyone was asleep and I found myself with some rare free time.
At the end of '03 and beginning of '04 I had made my last big dent in the list and beat several of the NES games that had been raw dogging me, like Black Bass, Blue Marlin, Might & Magic, Magician, Overlord, Star Trek: The Next Generation and several others. The drought began right after that, as I decided these games weren't fun to me and wanted to take a break from "The Quest." I kept beating PAL and Famicom games when time permitted, since I got to pick from a whole new library of games, but I didn't beat another US title until January of 2005 when I finished Tombs & Treasures. Championship Pool came next in March of that year then finally Wario's Woods in November.
2006 came and went without a single game being knocked off the list. The remaining games seemed like less fun than getting wisdom teeth removed, so I just simply avoided them. In April 2007 someone on a Gamefaqs message board said Overlord was impossible to beat. I had never actually tried that game but knew it would be a pain in the ass. Using codes I got lucky and beat it in about 2 hours. I know I cheated, but there was still joy in seeing the ending to a game that pretty much everyone thought was unbeatable. If you've beaten this legit, please comment.
F-117A Stealth Fighter came next in May and then I went nearly 3 years without tackling a US NES game. The drive simply wasn't there. In the back of my mind I knew someday I would revisit those remaining dark games, but for some reason it just wasn't a top priority.
Then, a few weeks ago, after plodding through games like Deep Dungeon for the FDS and several difficult Famicom games, I realized if I am now toiling in the Famicom slums I might as well try and knock off at least one of the remaining 11 NES titles, so I broke out Pool of Radiance and actually enjoyed it tremendously. One of the first areas in that game, cleaning out the slums, made me think it was a sign that I needed to clean out the slums of my games remaining list. I took out Bandit Kings a week later, suffering substantial psychological damage in the process (see last week's blog), so here I am, taking another look at the 9 games that laugh at me from afar and taunt me with their sinister black-toothed grins.
That murderer's row consists of:
-Gemfire
-L'Empereur
-Miracle Piano Teaching System (wtf??)
-Nobunaga's Ambition II
-Pirates
-Romance of the 3 Kingdoms II
-Silent Service
-Ultima: Warriors of Destiny
-Unchartered Waters
If you are familiar with the movie Pulp Fiction, by looking at this list you can consider me to be Koei's gimp. Miracle Piano will no doubt be the last on this list to fall. I do own the game, keyboard and I think the foot pedal, but have no desire to get into it and hook up an actual NES, especially after looking through the nearly 200 page manual. Plus, my kids will probably destroy the keyboard and color all over it before I get a chance to finish it.
You will be reading more about these games in the coming months. Hopefully the news will be good, but I know there are still several sodomy lessons ahead for me here. As much as I want to get into Pirates, which seems like the most pleasant of the bunch, I need to thin out the herd of Koei games first, but those fuckers are like toxic waste to me and I need to find a good helmet and a pair of hazmat gloves before I go after them.
Ouch on that $70 Nobunaga story. Heh. It is definitely one of Koei's more difficult Nes games. The learning curve isn't exactly smooth, what with neighboring fiefs invading you right at the beginning of the game. Or my personal favorite, the peasants deciding they hate you and revolting right before you get even one friggin turn.
ReplyDeleteIts actually interesting that my dad even went on to like the Koei games, cause believe it or not he didn't like this one at first. It was Genghis Khan that really got him into them. He did learn to like Nobunaga eventually though, and it became one of his favorites. Not too bad once you get past the opening hurdle.
Actually I am sorry to hear that this quest to see the end of all Nes games has really soured your view of Koei. I mean I admit that I don't really play their games at all, but having grown up with someone who has, my dad naturally, I guess I can at least see that they have entertainment value to some people. I guess it does sort of make me feel somewhat compelled to defend them.
They're definitely not intended for everybody, and that's perfectly fine. Some like my dad really love all the resourcing, building up of armies, and the strategy that's involved. Me on the other hand, I've tried on a few occasions to try to make headway in a Koei game, but I usually end up just getting overwhelmed by the sheer number of things you gotta do just to get started. They're very difficult games.
I guess you better hope "Ishin no Arashi" doesn't get a fan translation, or Top Management. Heh.