Pong has a long history going back before the 1972 release of the arcade version which popularized video games. “Home Pong” is a game changer in the home console market, previously occupied by only the Magnavox Odyssey. Unlike Odyssey, this game has a microchip; it’s a computer and can keep score. Pong was ready to go in 1974, actually, but Atari could not find anyone to sell it. People thought it was too expensive and no one would want to play it.
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Diving into the story mode, things struggle to improve. The character select is viewed from a first person perspective, with one of the choppiest frame rates i’ve ever seen. It’s not like much is going on in this section, so I have no idea why it chugs along at such an alarming rate. Pick your ninja and opponent, and you can then begin your fight (in an unusually nice touch the game classes your foe as being played by the ‘Jaguar’ rather than ‘CPU’), which is introduced by an unintentionally amusing oriental style announcer.
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You had to think of more titles that made the NES a classic and which one made you think of the NES the most? Probably a game that wasn’t around for a while, Tengen Tetris. This game is very unique in a couple of ways. This version of Tetris is actually a lot better than the official Nintendo release. The game was only released for a short time so there are fewer copies than the millions of official Tetris copies out there. Did I mention it’s two players?
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A vast majority of the enemies are ‘Maskers’ who look like multi-coloured Klan members and it is the colour of their outfits that determines their strength and attack patterns. There are also several other kinds of enemies such as ape men, ninjas, and mutant bats and they can all cut Mr. Albatross’ mission short in a hurry.
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There can’t be too many people that don’t know all about Super Sprint, and there’s not really too much that you can say about it. It was a simple game, even compared to others of the time. It’s based on either Formula One or Indy/Cart racing (probably the latter considering how unpopular F1 is in the US) and can be played by between one and three players simultaneously, whilst a fourth ‘drone’ car is controlled by the computer. This was before the days of linking machines together of course, so this is achieved by presenting each course in its entirety from an overhead perspective.
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