NES Games No One Played: Letter O

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. There were only four official NES games released in North America that begin with the Letter O, and since they’re all relatively obscure, I figured “hey, why not just review them all?”

• 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
• Letter H can be found here
• Letter I can be found here
• Letter J can be found here
• Letter K can be found here
• Letter L can be found here
• Letter M can be found here
• Letter N can be found here

OPERATION WOLF | 1989

There were only four games released for the NES in North America that begin with O. As such, this week I’m gonna cover all of them instead of just the titles I think are still relatively obscure, and if not for that fact I doubt I would’ve covered Operation Wolf. I don’t remember it from growing up, but it’s an incredibly common title so I’m assuming a lot of y’all out there played it as kids. I definitely remember the arcade version because you used a replica plastic Uzi to fire and it was exactly as awesome as you’re picturing. So how does the NES port hold up? Let’s find out…

There’s a few positives to point out here. The music on the title screen is pretty rad and the cutscenes are super macho badass, straight out of Predator or Commando: you know right away that this muscular mercenary is taking no prisoners! The game over screen may be one of my favorite images and text of all time. Also, Operation Wolf is a light gun game, and that alone makes it awesome. I mean there’s pretty much Duck Hunt and then twelve also ran titles, but to me even the worst ones are pretty fun if only for the shear novelty of firing at the screen. I really feel like this was a gameplay genre that never got fully developed and had the potential to be used in all kinds of random games. Like just imagine GTA or Call of Duty where the gun controller was all you needed. Hmmm, on second thought naw that probably wouldn’t work at all I see the faults in my logic the more I think about it. Can’t blame a guy for dreaming!

Anyway, Operation Wolf has a couple of hard pass flaws. While I gushed about the opening music, the game itself has none, only some bland explosion sound effects and the constant <pling> noise of you firing the Light Gun over and over and over. The uzi of the arcade machine wasn’t just for marketing, Operation Wolf is a game with a ton of enemies and thus rapid fire is kinda necessary otherwise it’s unfairly difficult. The only way to combat this is to repeatedly fire and that get’s real old real quick when you’re physically clicking a trigger. You can use the regular controller which is way too slow to be useful, but it has a distinct advantage over the gun: two buttons. In Operation wolf you have a bullet based weapon AND a grenade which means if you use the Light Gun to shoot bullets you’ll also need to hold the gun and regular controller in order to fire grenades. Have fun with that little bit of unnecessary multitasking! DUMB.

As I mentioned with the rapid fire issue, this game is extremely hard. Even when I’m shooting 80% and feeling good, grenades disappear real quick, the enemies never stop coming, and they always seem to get off a quick shot before I can blast them. Part of the issue is that the hit detection is really bad, and I know that’s a weird thing to criticize a Light Gun game for but it’s true. My eyesight isn’t great, so whenever I play these kind of titles I start at a couch’s distance away before inevitably getting closer and closer to the screen as it gets more difficult. Shooting close to or far away from the screen is the built in difficulty of these games. However I tried this with Operation Wolf, even going so far as to stick the gun an inch away from the screen, and I still missed more than I did sitting on my sofa. I’ve never seen anything like that! And if I can’t cheat at a Light Gun game than how do I even know it works correctly? And if I don’t even know that it works correctly then can I truly trust the intentions of Taito or Nintendo as a whole? And if I can’t trust them then is the entire thesis upon which these writeups are based invalid? All this and more on the next edition of “Middle Aged Man has Existential Thoughts About Video Games!”

Similar Games: Mechanized Attack, Freedom Force

ORB-3D | 1990

Boy, we got a diverse crew of games this week! A light gun game, a board game, a space strategy game, and an Orb-3D! What the hell is an Orb-3D? No idea! I’m not sure I’ve ever played this game or even looked at it for more than a few seconds. I probably just got it at a thrift store or in an eBay lot and just threw it into the bookshelf lockup where until now it had never seen the light of day. Well, today’s your lucky day Orb-3D, you’re getting your first conjugal and her name is sweet sweet Top Loading NES.

To start with, how have I never looked at this cover before: it’s awesome! There’s this futuristic Frisbee swooping into the foreground past this image of a creeper’s scowling visage. Across this lurker’s mug is a grid and on that grid is the most random collection of images: dynamite, a magnet, an arrow, a detached woman’s eyeball (well it’s 2019, I don’t need to get gender specific — the eyelashes have make-up so assign it to whomever!), and a motherfucking tiger. This game has everything!

Whoa this opening music rules! This could’ve been the alternate theme song for something like Knight Rider, I’m not kidding. On the title screen there’s a generic star field, the word ORB written all huge, and then this tiny “3-D” that rotates around it while dropping in and out of the foreground. THE FUTURE IS NOW Y’ALL.

The main gameplay is…wow. It’s Pong sort of, except you control the paddles on both sides. You bounce the orb back and forth trying to hit some…bubbles?!? I don’t get it. If you press the A Button, the orb loops up and back. If you time this right it’ll hit the bubbles before returning to you. You have a limit, indicated by your fuel meter, and if you don’t smack your orb you’ll lose fuel. If you press the B Button, you’ll got to “Vern’s” which I think is a fuel station but honestly it may be the most confusing thing about this game (and I’m pretty sure based on the year this game was released that “Vern’s” is an Ernest reference!).

Whoa shit! I went to Vern’s a few times before I ran into a screen with a giant purple demon dragon head on it! Loop your orb into each of it’s eyes and you can continue on. Sweet! Turns out Orb 3-D is a lot deeper than it seems at first. I compared it to Pong, but it’s almost more like a combination of Arkanoid and some weird child’s activity playset. The levels start out as just “hit the objects with the orb” but as the game progresses there’s all these bizarre puzzle levels that I was not expecting. For instance in one there’s a ball sitting at the beginning of the maze, and in this level your goal is to hit the ball in order for it to slowly make it’s way through the maze before your run out of fuel. And there’s tons of these! A simulated chess match, a weird ring toss, a billiards game, a car race, etc. There’s 30 of these levels before you reach this extremely off-putting terminator woman’s face that you’ve gotta ball your way past.

Of all the games in this week’s list I was for sure certain that Orb 3-d was gonna blow the most, more than even Othello. I am surprised to report that it’s actually a way more interesting and fun title than I was expecting. It reminds me of Hatris in that I had very low expectations but it’s simple premise and quirky ideas make it pretty fun and surprisingly engrossing. I would actually recommend Orb 3-D to anyone out there who hasn’t played it. Aside from the awkward controls it may be the best non-Tetris puzzle game on the system.

Similar Games: Pong, Arkanoid

OTHELLO | 1988

One trend in gaming I’ve never understood is the board games converted into video games thing. Sure it makes sense to have the computer AI to compete against if you’re playing, say Chess, and games like Monopoly need at least three players to be fun so electronic versions of it allow for 1–2 people to play against the machine. But for real, at the end of the day it’s just a board game. THAT YOU PAID $50 FOR SO THAT YOU COULD PLAY IT ALONE ON A VIDEO GAME CONSOLE. Seriously, some people played BATTLESHIP on the NES! Good lord! I don’t mean to be harsh, me and Chessmaster were like THIS <fingers crossed>, but it’s pretty funny to think that back in the day provided the choice between Bionic Commando and Pictionary many of us chose the latter. Given the $4 prices on eBay, I’m going to guess a lot of us also dropped months worth of allowances to purchase Othello as well.

Let me first clarify, if for some reason you’ve never heard of Othello, this is not a Shakespearean drama in video game form (which I assume would look a lot like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), it’s a very simple to play but tricky to master 1v1 board game also known as Reversi. It’s not as deep as Chess or Go (of which it’s clearly derived), but it’s slightly more strategic than say Checkers or Connect Four. You place a white or black tile on the board, your opponent places the opposite color tile, and you try to strategically surround the other player’s tile’s which then flips them to your color. The player with the most tiles in their color at the end wins. I make it sound really simple, but apparently there are World Championships in Othello, so there must be some really exciting openings or something I’m missing.

Boy this is probably gonna be my toughest review to write yet, I mean what is there to say about the video game version of Othello? Well, the opening music is pretty pleasant, sort of a jaunty adventure style theme. The graphics? Well, the tiles turning over is an animation of a tile turning over, soooooo that’s something! Ummm…you can choose different difficulties and time limits. That’s what’s up! Oh, and the game turns on and off easily, always a plus!

Will I deny that Othello is a fun game? No, the fundamental design of the board game makes any version of it entertaining enough. Is there anything special about the NES version? Of course not. I will say though that I probably will go the rest of my life without playing Othello with another living human, but I might, at some point, play the NES version again if only to play against the computer. I don’t know, maybe the apocalypse happens and I’m the only living man alive, I’ve already blown up all the racist civil war icons i can find, done all the drugs, collected all the mannequins to make them my sexy wives, but then I realize that the power grid is still on so I head home and settle in with a little NES Othello baby! Oh boy can’t wait!

Similar Games: Othello, Spot!

OVERLORD | 1993

The NES was often a culprit of the “doesn’t this game look unbelievable” cover art marketing strategy. The original “black box” titles eschewed the gross embellishment that had plagued the Atari and Coleco titles of the 80s by simply putting the actual pixel art from the game on the cover. That way, you didn’t pick up say Popeye and expect it to be this Dragon’s Lair looking adventure game instead of a simple blocky arcade title. However, after the black box era they seemed to loosen their belts again and let the cover artist’s imaginations run wild. Take Overlord for instance: the image on the front is this beautiful illustration of a silhouetted man facing bravely into this pink shaded apocalyptic wasteland. The title “Overlord” is written in this metallic futuristic font. So obviously I’m thinking “Terminator inspired action platformer or run n’ gun in the vein of Jouney to Silius.” But what kind of game is Overlord you ask?

It’s a stationary screen space strategy and resource management game. Surprise! The interface seemingly shares a lot in common with the Star Trek: Next Generation game and the options remind me of the gameplay of M.U.L.E. The graphics are pretty great if really simple, and the sound/music is excellent. And apparently you can save your game? It sounds silly today, but there’s only a handful of games where the save battery was included, whereas the rest of the titles either got ridiculously cumbersome passwords or nothing at all. So even if it’s total dogshit, any game where saving is an option is still sitting way above the rest of the class.

I say seemingly because I never made it past the initial screens. I watched some walkthroughs and it does appear that there’s plenty to do out there, but I’m not gonna lie, as soon as I saw a mouse arrow I knew this was gonna be a tough one. Then I started clicking around through the many, many option screens and…hmmm. What the hell am I doing here? This looks like an early internet browser akin to Prodigy. I’ve mentioned in past reviews that I don’t own most of these manuals and even if I did they’re all in a tupperware in my attic. Overlord has Pirates! or Uncharted Waters levels of “this needs a manual” nuance and that means it is not a pick up and play title. Once I saw the words “TAX RATE” appear on the screen I knew this was a lost cause.

It’s really a shame because I feel like this could be really cool if I had the time, patience, or general interest to navigate Overlord. However, unless someone goes back and time and gifts this game (complete in box) to young James who had way more of an attention span and nothing better to do with his time, then Overlord is perpetually a lost cause.

Holy shit I was ELEVEN when this game came out on the NES. I take it back, even if some virtuosic Quantum Leaper had tried to turn me onto this at that age I would’ve been waaay too middle school angsty to give it a shot. “Eat shit old man, I’m off to burn my old action figures down by the creek. Overlord DEEEEEEEZZZZZ NUTTTTTTSSSSS!!!”

Similar Games: Star Trek: Next Generation, M.U.L.E

OTHER LETTER O GAMES (CLASSICS)

Over Horizon (if you can rock the PAL games)

OTHER LETTER O GAMES WORTH TRYING

Operation Secret Storm (if you punish yourself with unlicensed games)

OTHER LETTER O GAMES WORTH AVOIDING

Olympic IQ (a game I’d never heard of until I googled NES games beginning with O, but it’s made by Sachen so…)