The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on the NES sold very well thanks to the mega popularity of the cartoon series that ran for a decade beginning in 1987. The game, however, is notoriously hard and not very fun, despite some positive design elements. The main gimmick is that you can switch between the four titular teenage turtles at any time by pressing START. As in the TV show, each ninja has his own weapon. Donatello is the most powerful because his bo staff has great reach and can be thrust upward or downard. Most platforming segments are divided into two floors, connected by ladders, and Donatello can clear enemies on the top level from below. Leonardo has a sword (katana), which is not as good as the bo. Michaelangelo has nunchakus, which everyone in the 90's called nunchucks. Their range is not great, but Raphael's sais are even worse. All the turtles move slowly and make giant floaty jumps, which makes dodging enemies hard.  The main reason the game is so difficu...

Contra exemplifies the classic run-and-gun genre of video games. The NES port improves upon Konami's 1986 arcade game. It usually appears near the top of "best of NES" lists. I may be one of the few people who, despite owning an NES, never played Contra or either of its two sequels . I discovered Contra only after playing these sequels on the NES and SNES Classic. Truth be told, run-and-gun isn't my favorite genre, in part because I don't often play with a second player. Where Contra shines is in its simultaneous two-player action. Even Ikari Warriors , the NES version of which is bad, received plaudits merely for offering simultaneous two-player at a time when that was rare on home consoles. Contra blows that game out of the proverbial water. In Contra you control Bill (and Lance, if a second player joins). In the arcade and Famicom versions, the setting is an alien planet in the 27th century, but the NES port was rebranded to take place in the present (1980...

Stinger is the sequel to TwinBee , an early vertical shooter from Konami that was not released in the U.S. (until 2011). While the original TwinBee began life as an arcade game, this and several other TwinBee sequels were Famicom and Super Famicom games only. In Japan, Stinger was called Burning TwinBee: The Rescue of Dr. Cinnamon! I don't know what "Stinger" is supposed to mean. The main difference between TwinBee and Stinger is that the first, third, and seventh stages of the sequel are horizontal rather than vertical (no doubt due to the success of Gradius ). Like TwinBee, Stinger uses a strange power-up system: shooting clouds causes bells to appear. If you juggle these bells by shooting them, they change color every five bounces, with each color offering a different effect. On the vertical stages, you shoot bells with your normal attack (press B). On the horizontal stages, you use the A button to launch a heart-shaped projectile upward. This is used both to release a...

Thirty years ago Konami published Contra III for the SNES, a sequel to the wildly popular Contra and Super C on the NES. Unlike those games, Contra III is not based on an arcade game but was made specially for the Super NES. The Contra series is considered the pinnacle of the run-and-gun genre. Especially because of the high volume of alien enemies, the games are best enjoyed with two players. Interestingly, Contra III lets you choose between full-screen and split-screen, the latter letting the players separate. As with almost every SNES sequel, Contra III basically recreates the original NES game with 16-bit technology, audio, and visuals. Not having played it before, I was surprised to discover that it contains only six levels, two less than the NES games! That's disappointing. In all the classic Contra games, the first player controls Bill and the second Lance, who seek vengeance for a devastating attack in the year 2636 by an alien enemy called the Red Falcon. Actually, there...

Growing up, I played The Legend of the Mystical Ninja at my best friend's house (though I was bad at it), and I had been looking forward to trying it again. It's an unusual, fun adventure game. I recently learned that in Japan Legend of the Mystical Ninja was preceded by three Famicom games and followed by three more Super Famicom games, none of which were localized for the West! The Japanese name of the series is Go for It, Goemon! It's based on a 1980 Japanese arcade game called Mr. Goemon. The emulation community put out fan translations of the Famicom games between 2009 and 2017. Surprisingly, no translations of the Super Famicom games existed until 2020, all three created by the same people . The series takes place in early-modern Japan. It has a light-hearted anime aesthetic. The titular character is a spiky-haired kid named Goemon. If a second player joins the simultaneous action (highly recommended), Goemon is assisted by an older, overweight ninja named Ebisumaru. ...

Super Castlevania IV should just be called "Super Castlevania" because it's not a sequel. Although not a remake of the original Castlevania (the levels are all-new), the gameplay, main character, story, weapons, and enemies are the same, as Simon Belmont fights his way to Count Dracula's castle to slay the vampire. Basically, Konami took every idea from the 8-bit original and made a new 16-bit game from it. And it worked great! If you liked Castlevania, you'll love Super Castlevania. It's like the same game you remember, only better in every way (not unlike what Nintendo did with Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ). The biggest improvement is the 16-bit graphics and sound. The soundtrack is a delight, and every level looks unique with nice parallax backgrounds. Playing this two months after I played Castlevania, I realized what a leap forward the SNES was. Super Castlevania looks better, sounds better, controls better (Simon isn't...

The Castlevania series is a mainstay of classic Nintendo games. Strangely, despite there being four, as a kid I never saw or played any of them! So I came into the first Castlevania game fresh, and I attest that it lives up to its reputation. Watch a video version of this review Castlevania draws you in as soon as you turn it on. The title screen looks like a film reel, and when you start, it plays a little cinematic of the hero, Simon Belmondo, entering Dracula's castle. The music and visuals are dark and realistic, in contrast to the light, cartoony look of Super Mario. Simon has a magic whip (à la Indiana Jones), which he uses to defeat all manner of spooky monsters. Vampire Bats, Zombies, Fish Men, Skeletons, Hunchbacks, Ghosts: this game has every horror stereotype you can imagine. Every three stages Simon faces a classic horror-movie boss: Frankenstein's Monster and Igor, the Mummy, the Grim Reaper, and finally Count Dracula himself. I feel sorry for myself having missed ...

Gradius is a classic arcade port on the NES, up there with Pac-Man and Galaga . Released with the title Nemesis in American arcades at the end of 1985, it established a new sub-genre: the side-scrolling shooter. Konami brought Nemesis to the NES a year later under its original Japanese title: Gradius. Some compromises were made in the conversion process. For example, the vertical-scrolling segments featured in certain stages were removed. Nevertheless, Gradius on the NES looks and plays beautifully (some flickering sprites notwithstanding). Nintendo's promise to bring fantastic arcade games into your living room was fulfilled. Left: arcade; right: NES In Gradius you control a space fighter jet called the Vic Viper that blasts away spacecraft, dodges myriads of bullets, and avoids obstacles. The gimmick of the game is that you choose which power-ups you want. Whenever you pick up a power-up icon, your menu option shifts to the right. The first option is Speedup, an essential first ...

TwinBee is a Famicom port of a 1985 arcade game that never left Japan. It was Konami's answer to Namco's Xevious . As with many early arcade titles, the NES only got the sequel, Burning TwinBee, renamed  Stinger . TwinBee is a vertical-scrolling shoot-'em-up. It uses a cutesy style ("cute-'em-up"), so the enemies are things like kitchenware and flowers. The game's main gimmick is that power-ups are gained through color-changing bells. When you shoot certain clouds, a yellow bell flies out. If you catch it, at first you get a mere 100 points, but their value increases progressively to 10,000. If it falls through the bottom of the screen, the count resets to 100 points. You can juggle the bells by shooting them. Four shots turns a bell blue. A blue bell, instead of awarding points, speeds up your ship (called the TwinBee). If you shoot the bell again, it reverts to yellow, but every five shots brings out a new color: white gives you a second gun; a flashing ...