Backlog Blitz: NES, Week 11, "Life, Uh, Finds a Way"

"Please, sir, I'm poor and sick and hungry..." The beggars and lunatics in Assassin's Creed have driven me to the point where I murder them if they even get close to me. At some point I may just see how if I can empty Acre without getting desynchronized. At least I played some halfway-decent NES games this week... Because that totally makes up for a voice actor whose voice and lines make my ears bleed. 

Jackal

Hey! This is fun! It’s a top-down shooter like Ikari Warriors, except how Ikari Warriors SHOULD HAVE played. Nice 8-directional movement and shooting, secondary fire which upgrades, the works! I wish my machinegun fire shifted direction rather than just shooting straight up, but you can’t have everything, I suppose. At least I can fire missiles in any direction. 

Journey to Silius

So this is pretty fun. Kind of Mega Man meets Contra, in a way. It’s not exactly Contra-hard but it’s not easy either. The controls are smooth, which makes me HAPPAY, and overall it’s pretty enjoyable for some indefinable reason.

Jurassic Park

So the opening music, which is ONE of the Jurassic Park themes, is so ominous and amazing. And then we get dumb chip tunes that suck for the rest of the game. Why couldn’t they have just used that tense opening tune? BAH. Um, this is LOOSELY, and I mean LOOSELY based on Jurassic Park. You run around dodging dinosaurs and destroying eggs while trying to save other humans. It’s actually pretty good, if glitchy—the screen in particular tends to flicker. Constantly respawning dinosaurs was maybe unnecessary, but it still works pretty well. Especially the raptor pen. Going in there was actually scary, which is an accomplishment. There’s some stuff which doesn’t make sense—you can’t go indoors until you’ve found all the outdoor eggs—but overall…one of the better Jurassic Park games I’ve played. And I’ve played quite a few. To my eternal regret.