Nintendo‘s first foray into the European games market took on a drastically different name and appearance to its native Japanese system. While the Asian market could enjoy a sleek red and white console called the Famicom (Family Computer), the unlucky Westerners were left with a rather ugly white and grey box called the Nintendo Entertainment System. At least that could be abbreviated to the cool sounding NES. Luckily the consoles were judged by what they could do, rather than their appearance. Otherwise Nintendo’s illustrious home console career in the Western world might have been cut very short.
I vaguely recall that the NES was a Christmas present from my parents, and of course, being a Nintendo system, my first game was a Mario one, but probably not the one you’re thinking. The title was in fact, Dr. Mario and this puzzler was a break in the platforming tradition that had been the plumber’s environment to date. It had a certain Tetris feel to it, but only in the sense that you had to stop shapes from filling up to the top before it was game over.
The goal of the game is to remove germs from the giant specimen jar by matching them up to the same dual colour pills as Dr. Mario throws them in through the top. As soon as you matched up four germs and pill halves in a line (the order and ratio doesn’t matter), the germs would disappear. It turned out to be quite easy to get into, as I remember playing it almost every time I would get home from school. I did end up playing the more traditionally set Mario titles and I enjoyed them, but I must confess that I never understood the fuss generated by the series.
The other game I was given as a gift along with the console that Christmas was WWF (Now WWE) WrestleMania Challenge. I was really into the pro-wrestling at this point, so my parents had chosen very well with this title. It featured all of my favourites from the time like Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, and Randy Savage etc. I’d also been watching the British wrestling every Saturday, so this just fed my love for all things gaming and all things wrestling.
On to the game and what we had was an isometric view of the ring where battle would be done. You could pick any one of nine characters, with one of them being ‘yourself’ (no customisation back then) and then attempt to defeat all the others one by one. As you reduced the energy bar of your pixellated opponent, you would then be given access to your finishing move. The Ultimate Warrior would deliver his Gorilla Press, while Andre The Giant would use his obvious weight advantage to squash you in the corner of the ring against the turnbuckle. It was simple to pick up and play, but with a good level of challenge at the time. However, like most children, I soon lost interest in WrestleMania Challenge and my next source of enjoyment came from another sporting title.
Blades of Steel isn’t a game about characters hacking at each other with swords. It is in fact, an Ice Hockey game and a good one at that, even today. What you have is a side on view of a hockey rink and your teams of five will attempt to outscore each other over the three periods of play. To spice up the play, as in real Ice Hockey, you have the opportunity to get into a fist fight with an opposing player. If this happens, the screen moves on to a close up view of the fighting players where you would have to successfully hit the other player five times to knock him down with the loser of the fight being moved to the penalty box for a fixed amount of time.
If I remember correctly, I was constantly trying to start fights in the game to get a man advantage, so I’d have more of a chance at winning. What helped me was how easy it was to start a fight in the first place, where I’d simply have to bump into the same player three times in a row. Though to be honest, I’m not sure it helped at all as the opposing goalie was always phenomenal at keeping me out. The options were quite limited by today’s standard in that you’d have a grand total of two game modes to choose from. You could play one off exhibition matches, or you could play a knockout style tournament to prove you were the best. The thing is though, when it all comes down to the bottom line, the lack of modes never mattered to me. Even noticing them now is just a hindsight thing. Blades of Steel is just plain arcade style fun.
Speaking of arcade style fun, R.C. Pro Am was a great little game. Isometric style racing against computer opponents was superb and I don’t think I could put the game down for long. You’d drive your radio controlled vehicle around an assortment of tracks with the aim of finishing in the top three. Finishing fourth would be a life losing scenario and you’d only get a limited number of those. You get the opportunity to collect power ups on your way round. It would consist of the standard fare such as speed boosts and point bonuses, although you could also find weapons on the track to use against your opponents too. Missiles and bombs would certainly make things interesting on the track. Like many of the 8-bit games this was very easy to pick up, but difficult to master.
And there we have it for the NES. It was a good little system to play and had loads of other games for me to play. Sadly there were a couple of issues. The first was that all of my friends would be talking about the Super Mario games and even though I was just a kid, I didn’t buy into the hype, so I had to find other games to hold my interest. Unfortunately, the second issue ended my NES adventure permanently in the form of the console no longer reading the game cartridges. These were sad times, but there’s always another console just around the corner and we’ll talk about that one next time!
Did you own or have access to a NES? If so, what were your favourite games? Let us know in the comments and on social media!
There are four previous entries in the Retro Revisits series and if you’d like to check them out, please head to the very awesome Geek Girl Authority site which is full of excellent popular culture content!