Planet Bob - Playing Hostages (NES)

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Hi there!

 

One from the days when Atari was still called Infogrames!

 

http://home.arcor.de/cybergoth/xype/hostages.gif

 

Well, I liked some of their Amiga games back in the day. Even when they mostly were just Atari ST ports, they still usally had very good graphics and music, plus that certain kind of french strangeness.

 

In theory, Hostages could probably be considered the godfather of tactical squad shooters like e.g. Rainbow Six. Back in the day though, I remember it was more considered a terrorist themed mini game collection

 

Still, a good one at that. Only recently I found out that there was a NES version and, as the regular readers of this column will know, I can never resist a 16>8 Bit conversion.

 

Entitled "Rescue - The Embassy Mission" on the NES, this name change seems to be the major difference to the Amiga version already. Everything else made it to the grey box surprisingly intact.

 

Certainly, the visuals lost some resolution and the audio some samples, but everything else is there: Positioning the snipers, sharpshooting through the scope, going down on ropes and the first person finale inside the embassy.

 

Yet, while there's a lot of options to replay the mission on higher difficulties, one complete playthrough still takes only 10-15 minutes:

 

http://home.arcor.de/cybergoth/xype/hostages_x.gif

 

Definitely no must have for a NES collection, but fun enough to kill a few terrorists minutes.

 

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another Infogrames game in the form of "North & South", ut first it'll continue with something different.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=blog&blogid=54&showentry=6553