Backlog Blitz: NES, Week 19, "SNAAAAAAAAKE!"

Well this week was fun. I royally screwed up someone's email account by deleting their calendar and notes--I blame Outlook. Outlook is terrible--and also managed to delete like 5000 songs' artist information in my music collection. So yeah. I'm in a mood to whine and moan about terrible NES games. We're getting towards the end of this journey, too! In the last third of the pile by now. Bet you thought I'd never make it. Anyway, here we goooooo!

Snake’s Revenge

I can get further than in OG Metal Gear, but this is still insanely difficult. There’s screens filled with searchlights that you have to navigate PERFECTLY, with not even a pixel of spare space. If you get spotted, alarms go off. And if alarms go off, a wave of enemies spawn that is guaranteed to, at the very least, drop half of your health bar. Also, playing a game where 90% of the first level is just black screens with Snake and 3 searchlights is…not fun. This is definitely an improvement over Metal Gear, but not exactly in the right way. I appreciate being actually able to AVOID patrols, at least, thankyouverymuch.

Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six

It’s like they took Ninja Gaiden and said “See this? DON’T DO THIS.” The controls have literal seconds-long delays, there’s no clear delineation between background and foreground objects, and the music makes my ears bleed. This game qualifies as a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

Star Force

Ah, I do love shmups. It’s hard to make a bad shmup unintentionally. But dang did someone try hard here. Powerups that don’t actually do anything, enemies with loop patterns you can’t avoid even if you specifically move into an area their pattern shouldn’t take them into like space-faring Medusa heads with psychic abilities, and, oh yeah, POWERUPS WHICH DO NOTHING.