#84: The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare

Worst intro screen... EVER!

Bart's Nightmare is a game I can remember renting multiple times as a kid. There weren't too many games that meet that criteria so this game must have been pretty good, right? Or maybe just really hard? I'm not quite sure...

Bartman VS Barney!

One thing I do know is this game feels like The Simpsons. It has so many little things thrown in to reference individual episodes... Jebediah Springfield's cut off head rolling down the street, for example. Or Blinky, the 3 eyed fish. It has Simpsons music, and Simpsons appropriate voiceovers. It feels like a really good themed tie-in game.

D+ is better than F!

The game itself is a little frustrating. You start off on the street in a dream sequence and need to platform your way around trying to survive until a page from your homework floats down the street. Jump on the page and you get teleported into a minigame. Beat the minigame and make progress towards getting your homework completed. Fail and you get kicked out into the street.

I didn't get to all the minigames this time around, but I could remember some of them from more than 20 years ago regardless. Itchy and Scratchy, Bartman, Bartzilla, a really weird Indiana Jones level, an even weirder level where you're floating in a bloodstream using a tire pump to kill army cells while you collect Smilin' Joe Fissions. I think there are 8 in total? I beat 3 of them this time before I died which is how I got that lovely D+ on my homework.

The minigames are fun but the street section is annoying. You acquire powerups by jumping over things, but that only works if you're on the exact same plane as the enemy and the enemies move across planes so it's annoying to do. A lot of the street level feels like a way to throw in episode references, which is neat the first time you see them, but gets old. Surviving until you find a page isn't a terribly interesting game mechanic and it gets even worse when the bets way to survive is a skateboard that moves so fast you can end up missing pages!

I wonder if there are any glitches in this game to speed beating it up...

At any rate, I was having fun and only played the one time because the sound was messed up in my emulator. I think I may need to download a new one or something because this problem is cropping up more often than I'd like. This was a fun game back in the day, and actually feeling like The Simpsons has to be worth a bump.

Rating: B+

#83: Roger Clemens' MVP Baseball

Play Ball!

This game is new to me, but I've played a lot of baseball games in my day. I didn't think I'd have much of a problem with this one. Boy, was I wrong...

Toronto Bears?!?

The first problem was a corrupted rom. It was making the annoying loud clicking sound that helped give Jack Nicklaus Golf the dreaded F- rating. On top of that most of the graphics were garbled. So I went out and got a different copy. This one had fine graphics but it still had the headache causing sound. This automatically made me unhappy, but I wanted to persevere and see what the game had to offer...

I GOT IT! (I don't got it...)

What the game had to offer is the worst fielding experience I've ever seen. Pitching is done with home plate at the bottom of the field. Fielding is done with home plate at the top of the field. The camera does an annoying swivel between the two which made it impossible to properly orient myself to field the ball.

Even worse the bases remained in the first orientation when it came to the controller. So I couldn't throw to the right base. It feels like if I want to throw from the outfield to second base I should hold down and throw but that would send it to home plate. Even after I figured out what was going on I couldn't get my hand to listen because of so much baseball game muscle memory.

I pitched to 9 batters. All 9 hit balls that should have resulted in an out. Instead they scored 6 runs and left the bases loaded. I wanted to try out hitting but I couldn't conceive of ever getting anyone out.


Rating: F-

#82: RoboCop 3

Orion Pictures?

I wasn't expecting too much from a RoboCop 3 game, but my initial thought was that if they made 3 of these things it was probably not terrible. Unfortunately this is a game based off the movie 'RoboCop 3' and not the 3rd game in a progressively better series of games. Now, there were games based on the movies RoboCop and RoboCop 2 but they seem to have been made by different companies/teams so this game doesn't actually have the benefit of being the 3rd game in a series despite the name.

HOW DO I SHOOT THE ROBOT?

Very shortly into the game I ran into this robot that fires heat seeking grenades. (Maybe they're magnetic?) My gun shot while ducking couldn't hit it. My punch while ducking couldn't hit it. I couldn't figure out a way to aim down while jumping so I couldn't even pull off a cool acrobatic move to kill it. I died to it twice and then just gave up and ran by it. The first time it killed me by continuing to launch grenades from far off screen but the next time it gave up for some reason.

5th best!

Eventually I found out that I'd picked up a second weapon type that shoots up and down and I probably could have killed that robot with it instead. Then I got game overed and decided that I didn't want to play again to give that a try...

Why didn't I want to play again? The controls are super chunky. Avoiding enemy fire seemed really hard. Like, so hard it probably wasn't possible and certainly wasn't worth trying. Robocop's best plan was to walk straight into the enemies and hope he could shoot them before they shot him. There was enough health packs to sustain this on the first level so maybe that was actually the plan. I've never watched the RoboCop movies so I don't know if that's actually how he rolls.

Then I made it to what I assume is the boss. He was on a motorcycle that I couldn't seem to avoid and killed me from full in 2 hits. Screw that!

Adding my annoyance was the high score table. It didn't loop around. So I had to start at A and then cycle through every single letter to get to the Z. Old school pinball games knew enough to connect Z to A the other way! Maybe you stick blanks and numbers in between but you always let the player cycle. Not this game. No, whoever was in charge of the high score table code had never played a game before. Nor had the people testing it. If they had people testing it. (Or maybe they just ignored the tester feedback.)

Rating: F-

#81: Monopoly

Rich Uncle Pennybags!

I know it hurts my boardgamer cool factor but I actually like Monopoly. It's not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination but I had a lot of fun playing it as a kid and I still enjoy rolling dice and seeing what happens. You can certainly play with rules mods that make the game worse (like Free Parking being Profit Parking) and I have to admit I don't think I've played the game since Tom and I schooled Andrew and Ken when we played it for money back in University but I still like the game. So I was oddly looking forward to this game more than most thus far.

WOOHOO!

Unfortunately the things I like most about video game adaptations of board games are not present here. The biggest problem is that they added in an animation when a piece moves around the board. And then they play it every time someone moves. It's like playing the game with someone who doesn't realize the board is divided up into 5 and 10 space segments so they have to count out each and every space. Only it's worse than that, because they're counting VEEEEEERRRRY SLOOOOOOOOOOOWLY. And they're counting it out for each player. Having animations on the community chest cards seemed a little more reasonable. You need to pause and read the card anyway. (Well, no you don't, just give me my $10.)

Nick, are you a moron? PRESS A!

The AI was TERRIBLE. This is the first trade offered in the game, from the guy who has Boardwalk. He is interested in my Park Place and is willing to give me nothing at all for it. This wasn't just the AI trying to fleece the rube either. I was playing a 4 player game with 3 AIs and they insisted on offering each other trades of something for nothing. The worst part is it went into all the menus to show them building the trade of something for nothing. The other AI would reject the trade. Then on the other AI's turn they'd offer nothing for something back the other way. I had to sit and watch them try to trick each other back and forth with it taking a lot of time for each 'trade'.

I ended up quitting before even finishing a single game. Not because I didn't want to play Monopoly... In fact I actually want to play a game of Monopoly more now than ever! But because this version is abysmally bad. I wouldn't recommend even the most diehard Monopoly fan give this a try.

Rating: F-

#80: George Foreman's KO Boxing

Stick to the grills, Georgie.

I remember George Foreman for his TV show and his meat grills. He was also quite the boxer and has several records relating to his world heavyweight championship victory at the age of 45. This game came out in the middle of his 'old man comeback' and plays up the fact that he's still just as strong a puncher as he was in his youth.

PHYSICS!

Unfortunately while the game claims he's still a powerful puncher the game itself disputes that quite heavily. You play as George Foreman and you do no damage with your punches. You need to land dozens of punches to do the same amount of damage that your opponent does in a single punch. George Foreman was reknown for winning by knockout; I won two matches and they were both by decision.

PS: Eat Doritos.

Take a look at that stat line! I landed 35 more punches and yet I got knocked down and he didn't. The first guy was pretty easy to dodge and counter attack so I can almost see why they'd want to set it up this way... But I'm supposed to be the awesome George Foreman. If the first guy is easy to dodge and counter attack so be it. Let me lay him out! Let me murder him! That's what boxing is all about!

On the plus side the game had voice overs and I like the way the faces get beat up as the fighters take damage. On the down side George Foreman doesn't do enough damage and that's a really big down side. Having Little Mac need to dodge and punch a bajillion times to take out Mike Tyson feels like it might make sense. But having George Foreman need to dodge every single punch and land a ton himself to get ahead? Sorry, that's just not right.

Rating: D-

#79: Faceball 2000

1999 iterations down...

What in the world is a Faceball? I had definitely never heard of this game before. It opened on a bit of a sour note with some pretty terrible music on the title screen. That crosshair thing makes this look like a shooter of some kind?

PEW PEW!

It turns out the game is a first person shooter. I'm surprised to find such a thing on the SNES which it seems is mostly platformers, RPGs, and sports games. I don't know if this game was badly written or if the limitations of the SNES hardware are showing themselves but wow this game is _really_ slow. It didn't help that the controls don't work the way first person controls should work. I want a strafe button. I want the ability to possibly dodge an incoming bullet! As soon as I got out of the training missions and ran into enemies that could attack I exploded. Someone would come up behind me and shoot me three times very quickly and I'd died. I know this is a standard situation in a FPS but normally you have a radar or the ability to turn around and look behind you.

Thanks!

On the 'plus' side the dead screen actually talked to me and said 'have a nice day' in pretty decent speech. I'm always amused when the SNES talks to me. But that really is the only plus side. I like that these guys tried something new but the speed of movement is just so incredibly slow that it just wasn't any fun at all.

Rating: F

#78: F1 ROC: Race of Champions

WEEEEEEEEEEE Are The Champions...

I haven't heard of this game before, but it's pretty clear what I'm going to be getting myself into. Racing F1 cars! Unfortunately for this game I don't much care for racing games...

Lots of ladies.

This game actually seemed pretty detailed. 16 different race tracks and a level up system where you earn money to spend upgrading your car. Different breaks and shocks and whatever diffusers are. I know there are people out there who love this sort of thing. I had a roommate who put a stupid amount of hours into one of the Gran Turismo games. (Myself and my other roommate put in a comparably stupid amount of hours into Final Fantasy X at the same time...)

VROOM!

As far the actual gameplay went it seemed pretty straightforward. L and R were manual gear shifts and it generally ran on automatic as well. Falling off the track didn't seem very bad and I was even able to run straight into a wall without blowing up which was unrealistic but nice. Especially nice since I couldn't find a way to stay on the track. Like I said, racing really isn't my thing.

Rating: C