NES Games No One Played: Letter S

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 S.

• 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
• Letter O can be found here
• Letter P can be found here
• Letter Q can be found here
• Letter R can be found here

SNOOPY’S SILLY SPORTS SPECTACULAR | 1990

I should start by saying that the Letter S is the most stacked of all the letters. There are of course a ton of titles that begin with S including a plethora of classics (pretty much anything that starts with “Super”…except for Super Pitfall). There are equally as many shitty games, and even more obscure guys. This week I really wanted to cover Street Cop and Short Order/Eggslode since both use the Power Pad and are very different games, but unfortunately I ripped the chord out of my Power Pad when I tried to wear it as a Halloween Costume. Whoops! So instead, I chose the game with the most S’s in the title and now it’s time for some sloppily slandered sentences on Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular. Hooray!

This game is pretty simple (hey there’s another S word!). Basically Snoopy flies to Italy for some reason and there he competes against his cousin Spike who is either a slightly offensive caricature of a Mexican guy or an accurate representation of that one kid in high school who committed to growing a beard before he could get past the patchy stage. There’s five events to compete in, beginning with a trip to Mt. Vesuvius and a good ol’ fashioned Sack Race. Here you race against Spike by furiously mashing buttons and if you avoid him (and the easily circumvented manholes) you’ll crush him handily. Next is Boot Throwing at the Coliseum, you just rotate the d-pad and then press A to throw the boot. Time it right and hopefully it’ll get thrown far enough for Snoopy and Woodstock to show you a peace sign! I’ve tried a ton and I can’t get past 15 feet, but I don’t know, that still seems to be far enough to win. If you fuck up and only throw it straight up for a whopping zero feet, the next screen is Snoopy mooning you! Little fucker! Pogo in front of some random ruins is next, and it’s basically a hurdles experiment with a pogo stick. The timing to get the pogo jump to work is real wonky and if you’re like me you’ll only make it one out of every ten jumps. Failing is totally worth it though because watching Snoopy slam into a wall is surprisingly funny; it really made me laugh WAY too hard. I sounded like a super villain and it made my dog leave the room.

Overboard is the strangest event, taking place in the Venice canals. Snoopy and Spike are on a gondola facing each other and whoever knocks the other one off wins. The controls are just your usual mashfest and even when I feel like I’m whomping the shit out of this pubescent imposter he’ll hit me once and Snoopy gets soaked. Pile of Pizza is my favorite event, where you’re in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (or PIZZA amiright?!?) trying to balance a bunch of tiny ‘zas. You’ve got a time limit and you need to get to the finish line as fast as possible without dropping any pies. It’s my favorite event because if you ignore the balancing act and just walk full speed you’ll drop all the pizzas except for two, but I guess your time is so good that you pass the course anyway. Neat! Last and most definitely least is the River Jump which takes place…hmm I don’t where that is. Maybe someone out there can tell me. This event, I just can’t figure out the timing/controls of. Every time I try to vault I either fall flat on my face, run right into the river, and even when I occasionally launch the pole into the water Snoopy gets stuck half way across and falls in anyway.

Honestly, this game isn’t even a quick distraction. The “Total” option that allows you to play all the events in a row is way flawed because most of the events only give you one try and on the Pogo or River Jump you will fail before you have any idea what’s going on. As such you can play through the entire gauntlet of minigames in under a minute without feeling like you actually competed once. It’s better to play each event on it’s own so that you can keep retrying, but then it’s basically practice with no competition. You get scores for each trial, but no one else shows up on the scoreboard to challenge you, not even ol’ Spike! So what’s the fun of it?

The easiest comparison for Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular is other sport events games like Track and Field or Crash N’ The Boyz Street Challenge. The difference is that Track and Field has more events, smoother controls, more chances to compete, more re-playability, and a way better 2-player. Crash N’ the Boys has similar “what the fuck buttons do I press and when” kind of gameplay, but with a better overall presentation. So basically if you were ever curious about playing Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular, just play those games insteadand ask a friend to randomly press reset every 30 seconds or so. It’s about the same experience.

Similar Games: Track and Field, Muppet’s Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival, Circus Caper

SPELUNKER | 1987

My uncle is a caver and he is for sure the coolest member of our family. He spends his time fixing power wagons and bouncing between Texas and Mexico, driving into the middle of nowhere to explore and map out unknown cave systems. He’s even got a few species named after him! Turns out if you go deep enough under the ground and just grab any insects, spiders, or blind salamanders in sight, there’s a good chance one of them will be a heretofore unknown and unique species. How cool is that?!? I bring him up here because whenever I mention what my uncle does I always get the “Oh, so like a Spelunker?” I mean yes, that’s the technical term, but it’s like calling jumping arpund between buildings “parkour”. It is, and will always be known as, “freestyle walking”.
Anyway, Spelunker was originally a home computer title before it became an arcade (and then an NES) port. I’m sure some of y’all are familiar with it from back in the day but this is the first time I’ve heard of or played it. It follows the basic arcade format: navigate some increasingly difficult levels, get as many points as possible along the way. Spelunker reminds me of similar titles like Gyromite, Donkey Kong Jr., and even Castlequest in the format of the screen and the size/design of the sprites. The music is pretty great, the sound effects work fine, and while the graphics are for sure early 80’s starter-kit level, they’re effective in their simplicity. The controls handle well enough, with the exception of one painfully gamebreaking problem…

Spelunker is one of those “falling from great heights would hurt or kill you in real life” logic games. You know how in Donkey Kong Jr. if you leap and miss a platform you fall to your death? Well in DKJr., the design of the levels is based on the challenge of jumping between elevators and navigating those vines to dodge enemies. If you could just jump from the top to the bottom at anytime, you’d avoid the enemies completely and there wouldn’t be any difficulty to it. Spelunker however does not need this mechanic in order to balance the challenge and instead takes this idea to insane levels of frustration. The slightest drop between ledges kills you in mid-air. The smallest press of the button while jumping on to a rope leads to instant death. Jump from one place to another? Totally fine! Jump slightly higher or lower than that last time? SUPER DEAD. It’s way too sensitive and it completely slows down the gameplay. Instead of running through the level dodging obstacles and blasting bombs, you’ll spend every second worrying about whether you’re going to slightly slip off an edge or accidentally jump when you meant to drop straight down.

The worst thing about Spelunker, way worse than the death by inches fall mechanic, is the Game Over screen. Once you run out of lives you’re givin’ a Game Over screen where your super sad score is displayed on a black background while some even sadder music plays at your virtual funeral. With every other game you’ve played, pressing a button here will take you back to the title screen, so you start pressing every button, wildly, and…nothing. The Game Over screen will not go away until the entire piece of music has finished. ELEVEN SECONDS LATER. And as you can guess from the last paragraph, Spelunker is Ninja Gaiden hard so you’ll constantly see this screen, try so hard to skip past it, only to get more and more frustrated when you can’t. I’ve played the first level of Spelunker 40 times and there were runs where I died so quickly that the gameplay itself was shorter than the Game Over Screen. WTF.

I lied, there is one button you can press on this screen, the Start button, but do you know what it does? IT PAUSES THE MUSIC. And since you can’t play the game until the music stops, you have to press Start again to unpause the Game Over screen. WHYYYYYYYYY?!? Is this hell? Why on earth would you want to pause the Game Over screen, that makes no sense!

Similar Games: Boulderdash, Donkey Kong Jr., Castlequest

STANLEY: THE SEARCH FOR DR. LIVINGSTON | 1992

Have you ever asked yourself the question “What is the most random source material for an NES game?” Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Gotcha? Nope, the answer is Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston, a video game based on the story of David Livingston, the Scottish explorer who got lost in the African jungle. I honestly know very little about this history, the real history that is. Most of what I know of it is in reference to the famous saying “Dr. Livingston I presume”, which I don’t think is a common saying anymore. It’s one of those phrases you only ever heard Bugs Bunny say in one of those super racist Looney Tunes episodes they no longer broadcast. Well, our boy Stanley is supposedly the one who utters that (maybe?) famous phrase, and so naturally someone dedicated an entire NES game to his search…for Dr. Livingstone. Random!

Anyway, Stanley is an action/adventure style game where you collect items, talk to people, and do some light platforming. It was made by Electro Brain who I discussed a bit when I covered Ghoul School way back when. They were basically responsible for a bunch of ambitious, albeit clunky, titles that no one played, and now all those games are pretty rare and expensive. This game definitely has the Electro Brain look which in a nutshell means muddled choppy looking graphics that all mix together. Just pop in Super Mario Bros and then Stanley and you’ll see the extreme contrast in how color blocks were chosen.

So when you first start you get off a boat you’ll walk around town looking for a few items you need in order to enter the jungle. Stanley can punch which is a really great animation that you’d see in old cartoons where they move their fists in a circle and say “put up your dukes!”. He can jump, OR he can jump and if you hold down the button a helicopter comes out of his backpack and allows him to float for a few seconds. Eat shit Gadget! The townspeople are pretty useless, but the spritework for them is actually pretty decent and they have about as much to say as the Zelda II villagers so already Stanley is off to a good start!

Once you leave the town you’ll see a map, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it’s indicating. The markers are really vague and it seems like no matter how far I progress the map remains static. After that, time to enter the maze! The overall platforming and action isn’t terribly difficult, just a little underwheling and clunky; however, every time you leave a level you’re given a chance to choose a route without any compass. Let me give you an idea of how confusing this is. First I went out a building in the village and ended up on a beach. After punching some crabs, I fell through the ground (not through a hole mind you, just the regular ground) and ended up in a random jungle. I ran to the left, at which point the map came up again. I pressed a button andddddd…same screen again. So I ran to the left again, got back to the map, pressed another button, and ended up in an entirely different area of the jungle. Fell down a hole, jumped down another hole, dead end. Climbed back up and there’s no way to climb back out. Ok then, fun times! I can honestly say that if I were to go back and play it again, I couldn’t replicate that sequence of events if I tried repeatedly.

Gonna go out on a limb here and say…this game isn’t that bad! It’s got a lot of charm to it, the music is great, and the premise is so out there it works somehow. The navigation is pretty wonky, but the same is true for lots of other NES titles and Stanley doesn’t even have those Fester’s Quest 3-D corridors you can never escape. Honestly I’d say if you’ve already worked your way down the list of great NES adventure titles (Zeldas, Metroid, Faxanadu, etc.) you might find Stanley: The search for Dr. Livingston somewhat engaging. Probably not though.

Similar Games: Adventures of Gilligan’s Island, Ghoul School

SWAMP THING | 1992

Alright, Swamp Thing! I’m a huge dork for all things Alan Moore and his run on Swamp Thing in the 80’s is still one of my favorite comic book series of all time. I vaguely remember the awful Swamp Thing movie (directed by Wes Craven? whoa!) as well as the USA live action series, but what was the NES game based on? Apparently it was based on the animated series which lasted…five episodes? FIVE EPISODES! I thought Fox’s Peter Pan and the Pirates was a thin premise for a television to video game conversion but Swamp Thing the Animated Series wins the grand prize! No wonder nobody played this game when it came out!

Well if you’ve heard about Swamp Thing for NES before reading this review than you’re probably already prepared to find out that it’s a bad game. BAD. It’s got all the usual signs of a shitty platformer: murky graphics (swamplike even!), screechy soundtrack, boring levels, and confusing sprite design (no clue what most of these things are supposed to be). ALL THAT, AND SO MUCH MORE!!!

First of all, Swamp Thang walks sooooooo sllooooowwww. I kinda like this idea, because in the comics he does move and talk especially slow, but in a video game there’s nothing more annoying than trying to avoid enemies at a snail’s pace. If you jump, ST moves much much faster, so obviously it makes more sense to just jump everywhere instead of walking. However, the devil’s compact you make by doing so is you have to hear the same blunt spring sound over and over and over every time he pathetically leaps. It’ll drive you crazy. The green giant can attack with his fists, but the hit detection is so bad that successfully doing so is way easier said than done. Alternately, coming within a Swamp Thing’s width of an enemy will often cause him to get hurt. Seems fair! Eventually you’ll get some green projectiles which make dispensing the enemies much more manageable, but you’ve got a limited supply. It doesn’t really matter though, because most of the enemies appear below you and although Swampy can duck, he cannot duck and attack at the same time. Yep, it’s one of those games where most of the bad guys are too low to the ground to attack. Woof.

There’s not really much to say about this game. If you’ve bested all the Kid Kool’s and **Circus Caper’**s of the NES library and you’re looking for more, Swamp Thing’s got all the generic levels, unfair difficulty, bland gameplay, and awful controls just waiting for you! Fun fact, it turns out, the Swamp Thing game reuses the game engine as The Simpsons: Bart vs the Space Mutants, which now that I know that, I could’ve just started and ended the review with that fact. Why on earth some game designer said “why start from scratch when we already got it perfect the first time with Bart vs the Space Mutants” we’ll never know. Apparently in 2001 someone made a Simpsons sequel by hacking the Swamp Thing game to make “The Simpsons: Return of the Space Mutants”, and if you’re a true masochist, maybe you can be the first one to play it.

Similar Games: Bart vs The Space Mutants

OTHER LETTER S GAMES (CLASSICS)

Super Mario Bros 1 2 & 3, S.C.A.T., Section Z, Shadow of the Ninja, Shawdowgate, Shatterhand, Ski or Die, Snake Rattle N’ Roll, Snow Brothers, Solstice, Spy Hunter, Super Spy Hunter, Star Tropics 1 & 2, Stinger, Super C, Super Dodgeball, Super Offroad, Super Spike V’Ball

OTHER LETTER S GAMES WORTH TRYING

Short Order/Eggsplode, Silver Surfer, Skate or Die 1 & 2, Smash TV, Solomon’s Key, Sqoon, Spy vs. Spy, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Star Trek: Next Generation, Street Fighter 2010, Strider, Silk Worm, Solar Jetman, Sky Shark, Star Force, Star Soldier

OTHER LETTER S GAMES WORTH AVOIDING

The Simpsons (all three of them), Spiderman: Return of the Sinister Six, Star Wars, Super Pitfall, Superman, Starship Hector, Snake’s Revenge, Sky Kid, Super Cars, Silent Service, Sword Master