NES Games No One Played: Letter H

I’ve got a pretty extensive NES collection and have for years been writing about the best games for the system while also trying to collect every title. As such, I feel like I’ve spent tons of time playing all the great games while the lesser known titles usually come in the mail and go straight onto the shelf. I wanted to make more of an effort to explore the entire library of the NES, not just the classics, and so I’m trying out some buddies I either popped in and immediately out or never played in the first place. Since I’ve got them organized alphabetically, let’s continue on with the Letter H.

• Letter A can be found here
• Letter B can be found here
• Letter C can be found here
• Letter D can be found here
• Letter E can be found here
• Letter F can be found here
• Letter G can be found here

HATRIS | 1992

I would have loved to have been at this pitch meeting: “Guys, I hope you’re ready to have your mind blown by my new game idea: it’s Tetris…but with hats! Yes, for your head! I mean, need I say more?!?” And then a giant thought cloud appears above his head, filled with the copious sacks of dollar bills gained from Hatris sales, stacked aboard his private yacht the S.S. Titty Coke.

Whoa crazy, I didn’t realize that this game was designed by Alexey Pajitnov, the guy who created Tetris arguably the most famous video game of all time. Well never mind, no need for the thought bubble fantasies, this guy was obviously knee deep in yacht hookers and blow already!

So Hatris, Hatris is more like Dr. Mario than Tetris in that you control a unit comprised of two hats and you drop them on other hats of various design. The mechanics differ slightly in that you have to build from the bottom of the screen (which is a row of living heads!) while in Dr. Mario the viruses are positioned vertically so you can move the pills around/below/above them. Unlike Dr. Mario, in Hatris once one of the two hats touches a pillar of hats below, the second hat detaches and you can move it over to another stack if you’re fast enough. So there’s some skill, and for sure some strategy to how you combine your head wear so you can best position everything. It starts off easy enough, but as the levels go on your screen never clears of it’s mistakes and once the fifth and sixth hats get added to the mix things get real tricky real quick.

These two bearded guys (who I now realize are probably the Russian programmers costumed as factory workers but to me look more like a couple of obnoxious mixologist dudes who wear vests in the summer) release the hats down onto the heads of their various customers until ten are sold, then the faces horrifically morph into the next bizarro hat aficionado. There’s a Charlie Chaplin look alike, a Dracula, a Frankenstein’s monster, Abraham Lincoln, and even a woman! Another wizard crown m’lady?

It sounds really dumb, and honestly I was expecting it to be horrendously bad, but in truth it’s actually really fun. The graphics and music are decent enough, but like every puzzle game the only thing that matters is how addictive the gameplay is. While not as entrancing as Tetris or the later amazing-ness of the Puyo Puyo series (Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine / Kirby’s Avalanche), Hatris is definitely worth a run-through.

And now that the word “hat” has been written so many times that it’s lost all meaning, I will never ever let one adorn my head again. Hmmmm…unless i get turned into a vampire (fingers CROSSED <wink>), because then that bowler is gonna look pretty fetching on this future blood vaping prince of darkness.

Similar Games: Yoshi, Wario’s Woods, Yoshi’s Cookie, Dr. Mario

HEAVY SHREDDIN’ | 1990

Next time you hit the slopes, look over to a fellow boarder and say “Looks like some sick powder out there today! Should make for some Heavy Shreddin’!” You’ll both do some air guitaring, smoke a bowl in some freezing hut, and then for sure you’ll both be carving that tasty gnar in no time!

I played Heavy Shreddin’ growing up, way before this Georgia boy got to experience the ski life, and I thought this was the coolest game around. Each level is broken up into a series of courses: some timed races, some halfpipes with tricks, some obstacle courses, and every level ends with a crazy Backwoods section. There’s a ton of variety to the stages and there’s a ton of variety to the moves. You can duck, you can jump, and when you jump if you press one of the four directions on the D-Pad you’ll do a special trick. Throughout the game you’ll be asked to perform all of these righteous moves at various times in order to advance.

While Heavy Shreddin does not have the best graphics, it is pretty impressive how large the levels are for an 8-bit game. Even if you’re flawless in your execution, it’ll still take 3–4 minutes of continuous quick movement to get to the end of each stage. And once you do, you’re greeted by the sultriest badass babe ever rendered in three colors! The music kicks ass, it’s super memorable and goes great with the tense action. While the controls can be a little stiff, once you get used to them the feeling of executing each move and just barely completely each race or jump is incredibly satisfying.

The only downside to Heavy Shreddin? It’s pretty tough. I didn’t have much to do at age 11, so I was more than content to play that first level over and over and over again, painstakingly moving my way through the obstacles through trial and error. Even with that indomitable resolve, there was still a point in the game where I could not get the timing right. And like any true NES hard game, once you die three times it’s back to the Start Screen. If you gave me a similar game 25 years later and asked me to have the patience to die repeatedly while accomplishing very little I’m not sure I’d have it in me anymore.

But alas, Shreddin’ is for the young. Nowadays it’s all about that Light Sleepin’.

Similar Games: Ski or Die

HUDSON HAWK | 1992

Woof, this game yeesh.

Alright, here’s my current list of the most obscure movies or TV shows turned into NES games that I’ve reviewed in this series: 3) Darkman 2) Fun House 1) Gotcha! The Sport! And now we have Hudson Hawk, based on the 1991 film starring Bruce Willis and Andie McDowell. I’ve never seen it, but from the trailer I assume it’s a musical about a man who leans in the dark and shines flashlights on things.

You play as the “Return of Bruno” era version of Bruce Willis on a mission to cat burgle a rare Di Vinci statue. First thing you’ll realize is that Bruce is tiny, like 4 pixels high and he can only jump about half his height. When the first enemy appears, a gigantic Rottweiler, you’ll try pathetically to hop over him without success after which the dog pulls you by your pants and throwing you off the fucking roof. SHIT!!!

Wait I’m still alive? Ohhhhh, being tossed off that building just harmlessly places you back at the beginning of the stage. No big deal then! It’s actually pretty fun to watch Hudson get chew- toy flung and sadly it might also be the best thing about this entire game.

After that you’ll throw a uhhh…it kinda looks like an all white ying-yang at a stoned bird, pull yourself on a wire between buildings, and then throw your peace balls at another dog, this time a Dachshund. There’s some boxes you can push around but they move like you’re playing a game of curling. You position one beneath an open window andddddd…nothing. Try as you motherfucking want, you cannot reach this window. You’ll just leap back and forth futily, grazing the bottom of the window sill while the dog occasionally mauls you. It’s torture. I eventually watched a walkthrough where this wizard figured out that if you perfectly stack the boxes and perfectly run jump you can reach the window. I tried it, but I still cannot do it without failing ten times first. AND THIS IS THE FIRST SCREEN OF THE GAME!

The graphics are abysmal. Not only are the screens huge and the sprites tiny, but there’s no clearly defined outline to anything, so your character and the enemies all just blend painfully into the bland backgrounds. The controls are horrendous, not only can you barely jump, but you’ve got the ol’ slippery feet where you slide around from your own momentum which makes the precision jumping all the more frustrating. Your attack? Worthless, just like this game. Hudson Hawk may be one of the worst titles of the entire NES library and that’s saying ALOT.

When you play Hudson Hawk you may think you’re invincible since you seem to take damage from enemies but there’s no life meter on the screen to indicate whether you’re about to die or not. That’s because, and I’ve never ever seen this mechanic in an NES game before, you can only see your life meter by PAUSING THE GAME. Here you’ll find your hearts, lives, points, and the instruction “A+B = Quit”.

Really? AWESOME! You know what other button combo accomplishes that? The On/Off switch on the Nintendo. Byyyyyyyyyeeee!

Similar Games: The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Alien3, Kid Kool

HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER | 1991

Hey look at that, another movie licensed game! Unlike the aforementioned Hudson Hawk, people actually saw this movie and based on their respective eBay prices it seems like more people also played Hunt for Red October. This game is of course based on the 1990 cold war era submarine blockbuster which in turn was based on the Tom Clancy novel of the same name. I honestly can’t remember much about the film, but I do remember that it was a big deal at the time it came out. James Bond…playing a Russian?!? Many heads of 1990 were blown. Then they released a video game! Nothing says fun for the whole family like playing something based on a tense cold-war thriller!

Bascially, HFRO is a slowly moving horizontal shooter but you’re underwater instead of in space or whatever. You’ve got missiles that shoot forward and some “UP” missiles that shoot…up. There’s tanks above the water that drop depth charges, but you can see them on your radar so you just rise to the top of the screen and UP blast them. Everything else is basically a crazy obstacle course where you dodge metal barriers and oncoming projectiles. It’s pretty funny to think of a submarine, this slow moving and awkwardly navigated military instrument swerving to and fro like a majestic dolphin. The game itself is pretty tough, mostly because there are enemies that constantly fire at you and if you try to shoot them straight on you’ll get destroyed. You have to master this technique of angle shooting accomplished by holding down/right or up/right on the D-pad, which is just as awkward as it sounds. Also there’s homing missileds that come out of nowhere and are 75% guaranteed to hit you no matter how hard you try to avoid them.

In spite of it’s difficulty, Hunt for Red October is actually a pretty good game. The graphics are better than most, especially the mid-level titles and cutscenes. The music is creepy and atmospheric, perfect for a submarine spy thriller. While it initially starts out as a shooter, there’s a later level where you play as Sean Connery’s character disabling bombs in a bizarre level that’s half Elevator Action half dam from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

My favorite thing about the game is actually the demonstration that plays if you don’t press start on the title screen. I usually don’t sit there long enough for the demo to come up, and I’m not certain at all if there were demos for any of the other games I’ve reviewed. In the demonstration, the computer AI controlled sub repeatedly fires every weapon between ramming itself over and over into the rock ceilings. It’s exactly what it looks like when you give a four year old the controls and let them go wild, just furiously mashing every button and running into everything. There’s something so hilarious and beautiful about watching the computer struggle so spastically. Behold the age of the machines!

Similar Games: Jaws

OTHER LETTER H GAMES (CLASSICS)

Heavy Barrel, Hoops, Hogan’s Alley

OTHER LETTER H GAMES WORTH TRYING

Harlem Globetrotters (If only because it’s 4-Player compatible using the Four Score or Satellite)

OTHER LETTER H GAMES WORTH AVOIDING

Hook, Home Alone 1 & 2, Hydlide