3 NES Games I Hated With All of My Heart

I’ve always been a glass half full-type of person. It’s just in my nature to be positive, regardless of how bleak something may seem. Even the most rotten of clouds have silver linings; similarly, every bad game has something good about it. Since making this blog, every review I’ve posted has been one where I didn’t hate the game in question, because I didn’t find any reason to – the most “negative” venture thus far being Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, but even that wasn’t offensive to me and landed itself a 5/10.

Prior to committing to beating the NES library, I had finished 70 NTSC NES and 18 import games over the years. In my time dabbling in the console, I’ve run into some real piles of poo. Games that, to even think back on them, fills me with a sense of dread that only a badly composed mess of an 8-bit tune can instill in a person. While these won’t be getting full-blown write-ups since I’ve finished them in the past and hated every moment of it, I thought it’d be fun to do some bite-sized reviews on NES games I couldn’t stand, and be a little nasty for a change. A little shady. A little rude, perhaps. Ooh.

3. RoboCop (1988, Data East)

One would think that a video game adaptation of RoboCop would slap. He’s a robot. He’s got a gun. There are bad guys to shoot. Done deal, right?

HA HA! No.

RoboCop on NES is an exercise in pain tolerance. As the titular future of law enforcement, or a schlubby guy traipsing around Detroit in a store-bought Halloween costume of him at least. You trudge through six levels at a snail’s pace, punching bad guys and trying to beat the grueling time limit.

Did you catch what was wrong with that sentence? Maybe there was a lot screwy about it, but there was one cardinal sin in there. Punching bad guys as a character who’s iconography is rarely seen without a gun? Indeed, in this waste of time, RoboCop only uses his gun sometimes. Whenever the mood takes him, I guess. Often times a level will start you off being able to use the gun for a few moments, only for RoboCop to casually tuck it up his robo-anus for safe keeping, and continue slogging on with nothing but his fists. Sometimes the inverse is true as well, with the stupid tin can feeling the itch to whip out his weapon when you’re just outside the bosses lair (meaning you had you work your way through a whole painful level, gun-less). What gives?

The manual claims that, when you’re forced to punch the hell out of things, “you can defeat the enemy you’re facing only by duking it out with him – none of your weapons have any effect on him.” I understand the logistics behind being punched by a death robot probably making a bad dude spit out his spine on impact, but a future robo-gun that’s the exact same in-game strength would be just as effective, no? Though the gun is preferable thanks to its long range, when you actually get a chance to use the thing, it controls like crap. Because of course it does.

On top of having two useless weapons at his disposal, Mr. Roboto is one of the flimsiest game characters of all time. Despite having a health bar that looks pretty sizable, he dies so easily it’s not even funny. He’d lose health if someone looked at him funny from across the street. RoboCop is six levels full of suck, and beating it was a chore. Just watch the movie instead.

2. Donkey Kong Jr. Math (1985, Nintendo)

Math ain’t fun. Even when you try to dress it up with baby gorillas. Next.

1. Fist of the North Star (Toei, 1987)

Whether you’re talking about games, movies/series, books, or even music, hardcore enthusiasts of any type of media all go through the exact same process. You find that one thing that gets you hooked into the medium, and you ravenously ingest all of the “most recommended” pieces of media pertaining to that thing. Once you’ve get through that list, you start to do a deeper dive of “hidden gems” that aren’t as readily talked about as the big dogs. You soon reach a point where the run-of-the-mill vanilla stuff just doesn’t do it for you anymore. Where does the seasoned nerd turn to?

Things start to get freaky-deaky from here. Diving deep into the weird, the terribly niche, the rarely talked about. You dive headfirst into whatever the hell you can find that vaguely pertains to your interest, often coming away from it disappointed or un-titillated; but hey, you’re willing to try anything once.

I reached that point with the NES around the time I finished ~50 games. The most popular titles had long since been finished, and the “hidden gems” list was running a bit thin. So, dipping my toes into the choppy waters of emulation, I sniffed out the latest GoodNES download and got to clicking around on random ROMs. Mostly my luck was pretty good, stumbling across good/middling ones one after the other. But this one…

This one hit different. And not in a complimentary way. I hate this game.

I was surprised to see that a largely unedited anime tie-in game had been released for the North American NES. Nobody knew what the hell these crazy cartoons were in the 80’s, and yet, Kenshiro was staring back at me! Or a faceless pixelated equivalent of him, at least. And so, curiosity piqued, I started playing Fist of the North Star.

Big mistake. HUGE.

At first, it feels like a standard beat-em-up. Mindless cronies throw themselves at you, one after another, and Kenshiro casually swats at them like they’re nothing but flies. Punches make the bad guy’s heads explode, complete with an admittedly really good sound effect that sounds like the enemies are choking on their own blood before their heads EXPLODE. Kicks, on the other hand, humorously send them flying off of the screen at Mach 5. For the first little while, this game seems like it’s going to be good fun. I hate this game, though, so don’t forget that.

Then you keep going. And you keep going. And you keep going. Even though the average, obligatory “way too short Youtube playthrough that makes you feel like a jackass who sucks at games” of FoTNS is only 15 minutes long, it manages to drag on for lifetimes if you’re a normal human being, and not a video making super gaming robot. It’s repetitive as hell, too; there aren’t any special moves to spice things up, or exciting boss battles to work your way toward, or good music to spur you on. It’s all shit. Even the goofy enemy death sound effect grates on your nerves after you’ve died for the 837th time, forcing you to hear it over and over again (until you switch to kicks, that is). There is a way to upgrade your tiny Kenshiro through the use of stars, which grants extra moves and other boons, but who gives a shit? I don’t remember if you keep your power-ups when you die or not. I’m not about to play it again to remind myself. I hate this game.

The later levels are disgustingly hard, too. Because of course they are. Here’s something fun that happened to me: when I beat the game a few years ago, I didn’t even get to see the shit ending, because the game glitched and showed me scrambled text scrolling up the screen until it froze. Which was undoubtedly more interesting than the real ending, to be fair, but it was a hot load of garbage all the same.

Playing it feels so pointless. I know one could make the argument that all video games are pointless, but “one” is a wuss who hates fun and probably whittles away their time on this god forsaken earth pestering people way out of their league on dating sites to lower their standards, or prattling on about 1970’s German train track structures, or something equally as yawn inducing. So don’t listen to whoever the hell “one” is.

Unless one is talking about Fist of the North Star on the NES, in which case they are absolutely, irrevocably, 100% right. It’s a horrible, horrible waste of time and I wish it had never been released. Truly, I feel for anyone who was unfortunate enough to have this shit as a little kid back in the day. The governments of countries that allowed this waste of space to be sold in stores should issue a formal apology to anyone who’s ever had to endure it.

Fist of the North Star makes me wish a muscle-bound meathead would burst through my wall and punch all of my pressure points, making my head explode and killing me instantly. I hate this game. I really, really hate this game. Like, a lot, you guys.

Having to remember Fist of the North Star on NES has taken me to a dark place I don’t wanna be in so I’m just gonna bounce and sleep or kiss my wife or something. Don’t play these games, even if you’re curious. Donkey Kong Jr. Math isn’t that bad to be honest, I was just dunking on it because I don’t like edutainment games. But don’t look at the other two. They’re not worth the effort of even tracking down a ROM. For real. Plant a tree! Read a book! do anything else! Don’t be like me! Play something fun instead! I warned youuuuu!!