Tennis is the last sports launch title I'll be playing (sorry, 10-Yard Fight, no one likes you), and it's not awful. As with Soccer , I had such low expectations that I was not disappointed. Bits of Tennis are found in the game NES Remix , so I knew what to expect. I mean, it's tennis, so you're bouncing a ball back and forth across a net. The action is fast paced and challenging, which is why it's still somewhat enjoyable. Tennis mostly does what you'd expect: you control a player, who runs around hitting a ball back and forth over a net against a computer-controlled player. If you're quick enough, you can volley (hit the ball back without letting it bounce), but I found this usually resulted in the computer scoring against me. Eventually, either you or the computer will miss, and it's on to the next serve. I struggled to figure out how to get the ball to go where I wanted, so the whole experience felt random. You can choose the difficulty level but not...

Soccer on NES is a lot like  Baseball  on NES: little, identical sprites play a rudimentary facsimile of the sport in question. Nevertheless, among the sports launch titles, I found Soccer the most enjoyable. NES Soccer offers you something approaching the level of control you want in a sports game. When in possession of the ball, you use the d-pad to cycle through players, then press B to pass to the selected player. On defense, B cycles through which player you control with the d-pad. The goalie always moves up and down with whichever player you control, so you don't need to switch to him. When shooting, the d-pad moves a target arrow displayed inside the goal up and down. All this is a stark contrast to Baseball, where you can't even control the fielders! Options! As in Baseball, you choose your team, though this is purely graphical. But in Soccer you can also choose the difficulty of the opponent. I was barely able to beat level 3 (of 5). You also choose the length of...

I owned both Pinball and Pin-Bot as a kid, both given to me by my dad. The latter was more interesting, but I'd sometimes play Pinball just for the simplicity of it. The fun never lasted long, and it's no more enjoyable today. Pinball has a top screen and a bottom screen, so as to simulate a full-length pinball machine. The most engaging part of the game is the bonus stage. Whenever the ball goes into the hole on the bottom screen, the screen switches to a bonus area. Now you control Mario, who carries a girder over his head to keep the ball up as it bounces around furiously. Pauline—nowadays the mayor of New Donk City—paces overhead. Keep the ball alive long enough, and the floor below her will open up and she'll fall. If Mario catches her and guides her safely to the ledge, you'll hear a triumphant tune and gain 10,000 bonus points. The evolution of Pauline The rest of the game is standard pinball features, with bumpers, poker cards, and a slot machine. They're f...

It looks cute, but beware. Ice Climber is oft spoken of as if it were an NES classic, but playing it today is an exercise in frustration. Which is a shame because the concept is cool. Instead of the usual left-to-right platforming, in Ice Climber it's vertical. Each stage is a mountain of eight levels that Popo (and Nana for player two) must ascend, five of which are on screen at a time. Parts of each level are made of ice, which Nana and Popo can smash with their hammer when they jump. The premise of the game appears to be that a condor keeps stealing their eggplants and carrying them away to mountaintops. At the top of each stage/mountain lies a bonus area, where they retrieve the vegetables. Why do so many early NES games involve eggplants? What ruins this cute game is the atrocious jumping mechanics. When jumping from standing still, Popo and Nana can move left or right only a single block, which is 1/32 of the screen. While this may be more realistic than Mario's jump, it...

I once played Hogan's Alley in a Chuck E. Cheese's (back when it was primarily an arcade). Years later, I sought to buy an NES copy, but never found one. Well, I have finally fulfilled that childhood wish (albeit on Wii U Virtual Console, using the Wii Remote). But after two decades, it was a bit of a letdown. Hogan's Alley launched alongside fellow "shooting gallery" games  Duck Hunt  and Wild Gunman . I'm sure I wasn't the only one who found the idea of shooting bad guys on my TV appealing. As in all these early arcade-style games, you can choose between multiple modes. In Game A, you have a certain amount of time (sometimes less than a second!) to shoot the bad guys from a line-up of three. There is always at least one good guy (Lady, Professor, and Police) that, if you shoot, counts as a miss. Ten misses and you're done. Pretty simple, and not especially engaging. In Game B, you are in the eponymous Hogan's Alley ( police shooting range ), whic...

Golf, like the NES's other sports launch titles, is a primitive though competent simulation of its namesake. In Golf, if you have a human opponent, you choose between match play (one point per hole you win) and stroke play (total score). When playing alone, Golf gives you no choices at all. There are no golfers to choose from. You must play as Mario (if he were just some schmo). There are no courses to choose from: every time it's the same eighteen holes. There are no difficulty modes or customizations. The golf simulation itself is basic but good. It doesn't suggest an appropriate club for you, so you need to know the basics of golf. I don't mind this because it makes you think instead of using whatever you're handed. The manual includes a chart of the maximum distance each club hits. Woods (W) drive the ball far down the fairway, whereas irons (I) hit the ball higher into the air for shorter distances. The lower the club number, the farther the distance. The stron...

Duck Hunt may be the most famous NES game that doesn't have Mario in it. The ability to play games in which you shoot a gun at targets on your TV screen must have seemed exciting and innovative in 1985. And, frankly, it still holds up in 2021. Target practice is a basic human activity, and the NES does not so much simulate it as offer a medium on which really to do it.  Wii U remote Unfortunately, the Light Gun ("Zapper") doesn't work on modern TVs because its light sensor depends on the timing of a cathode-ray tube drawing the picture line by line . Not wishing to see this beloved classic forgotten, Nintendo in 2015 re-released Duck Hunt on the Wii U, taking advantage of the Wii Remote's optical sensor. It doesn't sense the light from your TV, but rather infrared light emitted by a sensor bar you place below or above your TV. This approximates the original gameplay, but it doesn't feel as satisfying as pointing a gun directly at your TV. Duck Hunt is extr...