Life's Game List

Pooyan  was released by Konami in 1982 for arcade. In our journey's timeline, it's now 1985, so it's been a little while, and it turns out that three years later was just the year that Hudson Soft decided was the time to bring Pooyan  to the people at home. There's honestly shamefully little I know to say about Pooyan  in this intro. The game was apparently popular enough to warrant a whole host of ports to different systems throughout the years, as there are over 10 versions (!). A fun little factoid is that Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker apparently contains a series of missions called "The Pooyan Missions," which feature music and sound effects from this game as Big Boss shoots down balloons carrying off soldiers. The game was also designed by a fella named Tokuro Fujiwara, apparently sometimes credited as Professor F, which is awesome. He later joined Capcom and helped design some big games like Ghosts 'n' Goblins , and several of the Mega Ma...

Well, boys and girls, we actually made it here. It's taken awhile but we've arrived, and the NES library can only get better from here on out (and also worse, in many ways). That's right, time for Super Mario Bros.,  the loving spiritual sequel (or maybe just regular sequel) to Mario Bros.  This'n' is the one that basically put Nintendo on the map, or at least secured their spot on the map. In late 1985, the Famicom Disk System was well underway and rapidly approaching, and masterminds Shigeru Miyamoto (heard of him?) and Takashi Tezuka knew they needed to do something special to mark the end of the life of the cartridge, since it would soon be replaced by the disk. Summoning up all their design prowess, they decided to make this: Super Mario Bros.  They got Koji Kondo, the now legendary composer, to do the now legendary soundtrack, and now you and your grandparents all know the game and can hum the main theme by heart if you think about it for a second. Supe...

You don't know anything about this but it's been like two weeks since I've had time to write a review. So expect this one to be extra thick and meaty (it actually won't be any different but thanks for your faith in me). In 1980, Namco made an arcade game called Tank Battalion . It's a top down tank-game where you drive a tank around and shoot other tanks and walls to create pathways to shoot more tanks. In 1984, that game was ported to the MSX computer. And in 1985, Namco decided it was high-time Tank Battalion  got its very own sequel (or perhaps more like remake), and that's what they developed for the Famicom: Battle City . Why not Tank Battle City,  or just Tank Battle  or something, I don't know-- to be honest it's not a very helpful title as far as describing what you're getting yourself into. The game was produced by Ryoichi Oukubo, whom I really couldn't find anything else about... and the music was composed by Junko Ozawa, who w...

Oh boy! Football! The only real type of video-game that exists. All other forms of video-games are inferior. That's why football video-games are so expensive in every incarnation. Everyone wants to play football video-games, and nobody doesn't want to play football video-games. And you know what football game they really want to play? 10 Yard Fight. That's right, because 10 Yard Fight  was a masterpiece arcade game developed by Irem, whom we've seen as the developer on the arcade originals of Kung Fu , and R-Type . And If I'm going to play any football game it's going to by the people who developed R-Type . And wonderfully enough, Irem is the developer on this Famicom port, so any horrible flaws in it are solely their own faults! What could be better than that? I mostly joke, but 10-Yard Fight  has earned a special recognition for being one of the first "modern" football games. I'm not really sure how to say what modern means in this contex...

We've hit another Famicom title that doesn't even have an English Wikipedia page. So let's take our Japanese for another spin. You might think that this was a port of an arcade game by having a look at it, but it turns out it was actually published by ASCII (publishers of Astro Robo SASA ) for the Famicom directly. This game was developed by Micronics, whom we saw previously on Elevator Action , and I admit that doesn't inspire me with a lot of hope for the amount of fun I'm about to have. That's... really about it, except that the JP Wikipedia mentions it's a 3D shooting game with 6 levels. Seems doable (...?). It also mentions that in the manga ファミ魂ウルフ, or "Famicon Wolf," with the '-con' being a play on words, as it means something like "spirit," had a chapter in it where the characters played this game and challenged each-other in a race to loop the game. I don't have anyone to race with, but I'll play it anyw...

AKA - "本将棋 内藤九段将棋秘伝" (... whew!) Well, here's another "it finally happened," for you. Our first shougi game! So, now is the time when I admit to you I don't actually know how to play shougi. Which is going to be a problem, because much like riichi mahjong, the Japanese truly love their shougi, and it shows up a lot in video-games on old consoles. Just for you guys (and also because I've always wanted to), I'm going to teach myself how to play shougi to write this review and for future reviews on shougi video-games. Unsurprisingly, Honshougi Naitou blu-blu-blah  doesn't have a page on the English Wikipedia. Slightly surprisingly, it does have a page on the Japanese Wikipedia! Honshougi was published by Seta (no, not Sega-- Seta). It was developed by Random House, which sounds familiar to me, but I can't find anything about them and I certainly can't name anything else they've developed. Maybe somewhere along the line we'll...

Ah, Astro Robo SASA . I always wondered if the robot's name was SASA, and what that stood for. I've played it a handful of times in my life in various places, despite being a Famicom exclusive game. Apparently the game has never officially been released here, overseas. It was originally developed for the MSX in 1984, and this Famicom port came to Japan in 1985. It's a shame too, because the game seems like it would have been a success, but more on that later. That's really all English Wikipedia has for us, so let's go to the Japanese one (I need an acronym or something for this phrase because I have to go to the JP Wikipedia every single article to get decent info...). And to be honest, this time it doesn't say THAT much more. If you play in 2P, you'll have another character named NANA-- and by the way, when you pause the game you'll be given a musical track which apparently is called "Nana Ai no Theme," or I guess Nana's Love Theme (...