7800Lover

It was probably a case of Apple and Steve Jobs being shortsighted. Win a few, lose a few.

The strangest place I've ever played video games...that would be the high school I went to in freshman year. *record scratch SFX* Seriously, I am not making this up! My first high school down in NC actually had a Mortal Kombat 2, Art of Fighting and D&D: Tower of Doom. I'd never thought I'd see a video game machine in a high school!

These Atari 2600 covers were pretty cool. This was a personal favorite.

Who remembers this 1990 video game? This was for the NES and was an adventure RPG game very much like the Legend of Zelda. Of course, it was different in the fact that it was linear as opposed to the more open-ended Zelda games. Another big difference was that the game was exclusively designed for the West, seeing only release in North American and Europe. It was never released in Japan according to my sources. The hero of the game was a 15-year-old teen from Seattle named Mike. He's gone to C-Island to visit his uncle, a scientist named Dr. Jones. Upon arriving, he learns his uncle has been kidnapped (dontcha just hate when that happens?) and must go on a quest to save him. You could explore villages in an overhead mode and talk to people. When you went into dungeons, you used a yo-yo as a weapon (original concept) and could collect items like torches, baseballs, baseball bats, slingshots, etc to use as weapons as well as other items like medicine and snowman dolls. In contrast to Zelda, when you left these dungeons, you didn't get to take these items with you to the next one (other than the basic yo-yo weapon). I was never able to beat this game. There are puzzles that got tricky later on and this game was notorious for having a piece of paper included that had to be soaked in water to reveal a radio frequency. You were S.O.L if you bought the game second-hand or rented it. I also know a sequel was made, Startropics 2: Zoda's Revenge, but I never played it. IIRC, that game was released close to the end of the NES lifespan. Who else remembers this game? Did you beat it? How is it compared to Zelda?

I've been playing New Adventure Island for TG-16 via Wii Virtual Console. It is every bit as frustrating as Ninja Gaiden (which I got at the same time)! It's basically skill, reflexes, memorization, timing, and some luck. All of those seem to be eluding me though.

Burgertime World Tour? I gotta check that out. I'm aware of the sequels somewhat, mainly Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory. I heard there was a sequel of sorts for the Intellivision called Diner. There was a sequel planned called PizzaTime but it was never done. Hmm...I wonder how a SushiTime game would go. Maybe you'd be chased around by wasabi and packets of soy sauce?

Atari Protos discusses this game more in-depth: http://www.atariprotos.com/8bit/software/supermanIII/supermanIII.htm The game itself seems to be sort of like Missile Command with elements of that Atari 2600 Superman game (which I could never figure out). It deals with Supes taking on the supercomputer from the film (the one that Richard Pryor's character, Gus, designs; watch the movie for more info). I don't think the Atari computers were advanced enough to pull off that whole missile sequence - it was just too complicated at the time for home computers, much like the Last Starfighter.

Here's another one: Loco-Motion from Centauri, 1982. This was a puzzle game similar to the old sliding tile puzzles. You had to drive a train to pick up passengers and you had to move tiles around too. There were a lot of ways to die: if you went into the barriers on the edge of the screen, if you ran off the track into the gap, or if you ran into a dead end. If you waited too long to pick up passengers at a station, they'd send a Crazy Train after you (those train riders mean business!) and if you went around constantly on a loop of track, you'd get a Sweeper sent after you. I played this game at a flea market in Eden, NC sometime in the early 1990s which was the same place where I played Mappy. Anyone else see/play this one in the wild?

Burgertime to this day remains my ALL-TIME FAVORITE video game. I have the emulated ports on PS1 and Wii plus the Beef Drop game for the Atari 7800. I always found the NES version so incredibly hard for some reason - even harder than the arcade game. My strategy is to follow a top-to-bottom plan. I try to get the falling pieces of burger to do the work for me by knocking loose the ones below. It's also a key weapon against those food foes. Interesting bit of trivia: one of the enemies in the game is a fried egg. My sources tell me that the origin of this foe is from Japan. Burgertime was supposed to have been designed in the Land of the Rising Sun and there, many places offer a fried egg on top of your burger. I wonder how that tastes.

Haunted House is a must-have! Also, be sure to get Keystone Kapers and Pitfall. Pigs in Space is three games in one - hard to argue with that.

Prof. Pac-Man...I've heard of this game, but never seen an actual unit. I do remember a few trivia video games I played at the now defunct South Beach Arcade in Staten Island, NY. Given it was from the Golden Age of the arcade (late 1970s/early 1980s), I was able to answer most of the questions since I'm a late Gen-Xer. Trivia games don't seem to pull in the same number of people that go for the usual Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, etc.

How about the ending of Alex Kidd in Hi-Tech World for the Sega Master System? When you finally made it to the end of the game, you just get a shot of Alex Kidd playing a sit-down machine of Outrun and text reading "Prince Alex's adventure is over. Maybe you will meet him again someday." That's a quest game with a time limit on it and many instant deaths (or endings). When you beat the game...that's the reward you get?!

Here's another one: KICK MAN (Midway, 1981) - also known as KICK I played this at a Showbiz Pizza down in North Carolina in the early 1990s! The controls were a trackball and buttons. You had to pop balloons by moving so that they landed on your head. If you missed, you had to kick the balloon back into the air - if it touched the ground, you lost a life. Later rounds had you stack balloons on your head and Pac-Man made a guest appearance to eat those balloons or even ghosts that showed up! The bonus round had you trying to catch balloons and dodge bombs.

I'm still struggling with level 4-2 right now. It is indeed a matter of patience, skills, and memorizing patterns and power-ups.

I remember that. The manual I got for Mario Bros. describes Mario and Luigi as being carpenters. The story I heard was that their professions changed because someone on the production staff said they looked more like plumbers than carpenters.

I recently got Ninja Gaiden for the NES on my Wii Virtual Console. That game is EVERY bit as difficult as I remember. It's said to be one of the hardest games on the system. As Ryu Hayabusa, you have to fight through various levels armed with your sword and special ninja magics like shuriken and ninja fire. The game mechanics remind me of Castlevania (the life meter and special weapons) combined with Double Dragon (fighting constant waves of foes in hand to hand combat). It is very tough for me. Those birds that attack you in the third act are very tricky and a number of times, they've knocked me to my death. Since the game was designed in Japan, I have to wonder what is it with the Japanese and killer birds. Do birds routinely kill people in Japan? Anyone else play or manage to beat Ninja Gaiden?

Star Trek: the Motion Picture Of course, that game had nothing to do with the movie. Instead of V'Ger, it's a shooter like Battlezone where Captain Kirk has to guide the starship Enterprise against constant waves of Klingons and Romulans. Just what did Kirk do to anger the whole universe?

How about the NES Burgertime? Compared to its arcade counterpart, that game is SOOOOO hard! You're lucky to even reach the third stage on that version! Or what about Toki? I was able to beat the NES port...in contrast to the aforementioned example, the arcade version was very difficult.

Wow...I'm shocked. I remember Hudson Soft most for their Adventure Island series. In fact, I'm playing through New Adventure Island on the TG-16 as I type this.

Who here remembers the 1984 side-scrolling game, Pac-Land? This predated Super Mario Brothers by at least a year! However, the game itself doesn't have hidden places to explore unlike SMB. There's no vines that take you into the clouds or pipes that lead to underground rooms. Still though, it's quite fun. You play Pac-Man himself. Your mission in this game is to help a fairy get out of Pac-Land and back to her home. After getting the fairy back, you're given special boots and have to get back to your own home. The ghosts however are out to get you. You either have to avoid them or eat them if you can get a power pellet. Depending on what version of the game you played, the character sprites were different. The Japanese version had a more Japanese Pac-Man with a long nose, different eyes, and a feathered hat. The USA version had Pac-Man and his family resembling their counterparts in the Hanna Barbera cartoon, plus the addition of Pac-Man's pet from said cartoon, Chomp Chomp the dog and Sourpuss the cat. It wasn't exactly Super Mario Brothers, but I had fun with it either ways. I played it on emulator, but also played it at least once in the arcade at a Sears mini-arcade down south. Also I saw it throughout many arcades in the early-to-mid 1990s. It did have ports to some computers as well as the TG-16 and the Atari Lynx (IMHO, a port to the Atari 7800 would have been awesome). Anyone else here play Pac-Land?

The special endings to the NES Metroid and Super Metroid on SNES were cool. The NES manual said there was a special ending if you beat the game under a certain amount of time. That ending was Samus removing his helmet...or should I say, HER helmet and revealing that under the suit, she was a woman. If you beat Super Metroid in two hours or less, Samus wore a bikini. That led to an urban legend that if you beat Super Metroid in thirty minutes or less, Samus would be completely naked. I have no clue how that legend got started.

Anyone remember the ending when you beat Shinobi? You got a "Game Over" - the exact same ending if the foes kill you in the game!

I have Data East Arcade and it's pretty cool. I'm interested in more of these releases but haven't had a chance to pick them up. I have some retro collections too on the PS2 like Taito and Midway - sometimes I'll hook it up just to play them.

How about Monster Party on the NES? The game starts off with a kid named Mark being recruited by a dragon named Bert to fight monsters. When you beat the game, Bert gives Mark a princess as a reward. When Mark gets back to Earth, the princess turns into a horrible monster...Mark screams - and then he wakes up. It was all a dream. Bert then shows up and the game starts all over again. It was neverending! How about Veigues Tactical Gladiator on the TG-16/PC Engine? When you beat the game...your character ended up dying anyways!

I like Xevious on the 7800. I thought it was a good arcade port and just as good as that NES port. I have the control pad for the 7800 - I personally prefer using it for Double Dragon. It's much easier than trying to use the Proline for that game.