NES Games No One Played: Letter W

Time to get obscure!

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 W.

• 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
• Letter S can be found here
• Letter T can be found here
• Letter U can be found here
• Letter V can be found here

WACKY RACES | 1992

Based on the 1968 parody cartoon of the 1965 film “The Great Race”, this game was obviously a huge hit with child audiences in 1991! As familiar as we all are with The Flintstones (now in vitamin form!), The Jetsons, and Scooby Doo, Hanna-Barbera also flooded the airwaves for generations with lesser know properties like Speed Buggy, Jabberjaw, and of course Wacky Races. I remember seeing WR come on TV and thinking “Is this like an all-star show? Do Scooby and the gang race the Mystery Wachine? Wait who the hell are all these guys?” Well, if you vaguely remember the show, then I guarantee you’ll even more vaguely not at all remember that they made an NES port of it for some bizaree reason.

So if you had seen the show you’re probably thinking this is a racing game since, y’know, the show was only about a giant never ending race, but no it’s actually a side scrolling platformer. Surprise! You play as Muttley the canine sidekick to the show’s main villain and struggling porn actor “Dick Dastardly”. You can choose from three courses “Hip Hop”, “Splish Splash” and “Go Go America”. Not sure what the term “hip hop” meant in 1968, but I can assure you that it has no modern context here. The gameplay is pretty straightforward platforming with a mini shooter style upgrade system thrown in there. At first Muttley just bites, but if you collect bones you can select new items the more you find. He can throw arcing bombs, shoot a straight-line bark projectile, kind of float sort of with the wing, and the last upgrade (the heart) not only gives you an extra hit of damage but also refills your life. Dayum, jackpot right there!

The graphics, spritework, sound, and music are pretty great, similar in clean execution to later life NES titles like Panic Restaurant and Rockin’ Kats. The gameplay is kinda smooth, but there’s a couple huge problems here. The first is that the game itself is very easy, so much in fact that you can breeze through this bad boy in a few minutes. This is made all the easier by the fact that extra lives are everywhere and the heart upgrade is essentially a constant extra life you can use whenever. The other big problem is the wing upgrade. At first you’ll use it and think “hmmmm nothing happened” but later you’ll find an area where you clearly need to jump farther than usual so you figure it must be used here. You’ll bash around on your controller, pressing every button furiously, before you’ll accidentally tap A twice in the air which makes him lay flat and awkwardly float (if you keep tapping A you can stay aloft for longer). What’s really messed up about this is that a) it’s so un-intuitive and clunky to utilize b) there are gaps that you can just barely reach if you jump and float perfectly meaning you’ll die a ton trying to reach what should be easily accessible areas (if the shit worked that is) and c) when you die you lose the float technique, but there are areas that you can absolutely reach with no way to upgrade to the wing and no way to progress without it. Bullshit.

All that to say, Wacky Races would be an above average platformer if not for some unpolished gameplay design. On a system where a third of the titles are platformers, just throw a stick and you’ll probably hit a game more fun than this.

Similar Games: Jetsons, Panic Restaurant

WEREWOLF: THE LAST WARRIOR | 1991

Such an epic, disjointed title that is. The story’s more straightforward though, communicated in one single line: “No more heroes, fuzzball. Your time has come!” Then you’re immediately thrust into a 1v1 fight with a beefy dude that looks straight out of Pro Wrestling. You’ll start attacking and wonder “why isn’t my guy doing anything?!” Well, it’s one of those unholy games where B IS JUMP AND A IS ATTACK. Whyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?! Once you very slightly nudge this guy to death, you’re rewarded with a sweet W that, after the longest most unnecessary yet awesome cutscene ever, turns your ass into a werewolf…with blades for hands. HOLY SHIT! Seriously, you’re a fucking werewolf with the T-1000’s metal extensions from the second Terminator movie! It’s maybe the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

As you walk, gently thrusting your hairy knives with abandon (using the A button of course), you’ll pass all these signs that say “Don’t Knock”. I have no idea what that means, it’s incredibly cryptic and has absolutely no bearing on anything. Immediately the biggest bummer about this game is that even though you are obviously the baddest bad ass character EVER CREATED, all the enemies either can’t be hurt or just appear rapidly from off screen, hit you, and then immediately disappear leaving your rad weapons to waste. It really takes all the action out of the action game.

In the second level you’re dropped in front of a pit covered in spikes that’s obviously too far to jump across. Hmmm, what to do….Well after much leaping and impaling, I looked it up. Turns out, the werewolf can grab the pipes above (which I assumed were part of the background), but only if you time your button presses perfectly. PERFECTLY, and even then it probably won’t work. Check out this description from the Gamefaqs description of Werewolf: “To grab onto the ceiling, you must first jump. Then press UP and A simultaneously just as you reach the height of your jump and are about to fall to latch onto the ceiling. The end of your claw should just touch the ceiling or you will not latch on.” That is the pinnacle of shitty design right there. And sadly, this ain’t the only instance of bad controls (try jumping using a ladder with the werewolf, Jesus fucking Christ).

It’s really a shame, because everything else about this game rules. The graphics are great, the soundtrack kicks ass, there’s clearly a lot of time and ideas thrown into the level design and move selection, and as I said before the Werewolf is the best character ever created, give me twelve action figures stat! Sadly none of this will overcome the lackluster gameplay.

Similar Games: Power Blade, Monster Party, Ninja Gaiden

WIDGET | 1992

Widget? What the fuck is that? I had to look it up and apparently it was yet another fairly obscure Saturday morning cartoon. I’ve never seen it, but this random character description from it’s Wikipedia page kinda makes me wish I had: “Gyp: Works alongside Flim Flam. She’s a slave trader whose loyalty to Flim Flam is quite strong.” Fuck, this show must’ve been Return to Oz levels of dark!

Well, the NES games shows no such evil intent, it’s just another average upbeat platformer. I say upbeat because Widget smiles the entire time he walks and he moves at the most grandpa levels of slowness, just whistling dixie the whole way. The first thing you’ll notice, other than how obnoxious your main character is, is how pathetic your attack is. The little pea shooter Widget uses needs between two and seven (SEVEN!) hits to kill an enemy on the first screen. The third enemy you come to is this worm snake next to a platform and if you jump next to him thinking you can blast him real quick, naw player you’ll only get two shots off before he grazes against Widget slightly sending him flying into the abyss below. You can get upgrades to your gun in later levels, but you have to be perfect in dealing with enemies until you do which makes the fun factor fly right out the window.

Gotta say, I kinda hate this game. It’s just the epitome of mediocre platformer and the grating gameplay difficulty is made all the more worse by the constant repeating loop of music. Bleh. However, there are a couple features to Widget that should make it rad. The first is that Widget has kind of an open world field (I think). There’s a map you can consult which makes me think you can revisit areas later. Maybe? I didn’t play it long enough to find out. The second stand out here is that there’s a select screen with different upgrades! What? This is like a Mega Man clone?! Well, slow down their chief, this isn’t exactly Whomp Em’. Even though it may sound promising to change into a cannon, a bird or even a…um…dolphin, ya gotta trust me when I say none of them will make playing Widget any more enjoyable.

Similar Games: Little Samson, Rockin Kats

WURM: JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH | 1991

Man, when I first heard this was an NES game my imagination ran away with itself. Along with Mutant Virus: Crisis in a Computer World, I thoroughly expected Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth to be some epic Goonies II style adventure game. And, well, in some ways it is that but in other ways it’s not? I say that because to my surprise Wurm is actually a bunch of different games all rolled into one.

You play as this green haired space badass straight out of Phantasy Star. In the first area you’re in this cave driving a batmobile with a drill nose. You have two options “Change” and “Drill”, but this is entirely misleading. You’re actually already in drill mode, and if you hold down the A button you’ll change to a flying version of the same vehicle. Wait wtf? Why on earth would I want to be the drill then? It moves slower, it’s less effective at shooting enemies, and it can’t get over pits? Why not just make this a horizontally scrolling shooter from the start, that’s basically all it is once you figure out what the fuck “Change” means. After you get past the bizarre control options you’ll find that this is the easiest shooter level ever constructed.

The next level is by far the strangest. You switch to a first person view inside a cave and there’s a bizarre tentacled bad guy with one eye staring at you. Seems pretty straight forward right, just blast some enemies Doom-style? Nope! You’ll see two options “Talk” and “Use” as well as a header reading “Possibility” and it’s at 0%. If you pick “Use” the option for the Electro Gatling gun will come up…but you can’t use it? Why the hell not? Well turns out you have to talk to three dudes one at a time, listen to their obvious and unnecessary advice, and at some point your possibility level will be high enough that now you can shoot the enemy. It’s such a bizarre mechanic that completely slows down the game and makes this entire section way less fun than it should be (and honestly it had potential!)

After that, you’ll switch to side scrolling action exploration in a huge but rather monotonous cave that is actually very reminiscent of Goonies II. Finally! After the side scrolling level it rotates back to scrolling shooter then to first person shooter/confidence builder and back to side scrolling action again. It ain’t much, but…ummm…yeah it ain’t much. Like many of the games on this list (and geez especially this week) this is yet another example of an ambitious title with a lot of good ideas on how to vary the gameplay, but none of the ideas are executed well making for some somewhat frustrating and extremely dull 8-bitgaming. No one perfected the action genre beyond Ninja Gaiden or Batman, and for every interesting experimental title like Vice: Project Doom or Zen the Intergalactic Ninja there’s twenty more Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth’s, and trust me the center of the earth is exactly where they should’ve ended up.

Similar Games: Xexyz, Vice: Project Doom, Goonies II

OTHER LETTER W GAMES (CLASSICS)

Wild Gunman, Willow, Wizards & Warriors, Wrecking Crew

OTHER LETTER W GAMES WORTH TRYING

Whomp Em’, Wario’s Woods, Wizardry 1&2, Wrath of Black Manta

OTHER LETTER W GAMES WORTH AVOIDING

Wolverine, Winter Games, Where’s Waldo, Wayne’s World, Who Framed Roger Rabbit