NES games that disappointed you

[MaximRecoil]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I was just going to leave the confused icon, but yeah, pretty much this.  Anyone disappointed in the NES game because of the arcade even in 87/88 when it came out in mass to stores really needed to have a reality check

 

Explain to me, using only things you knew when you were 11 or 12 (assuming you were 11 or 12 before the World Wide Web existed), why the NES could do Excitebike exactly like the arcade Vs. Excitebike, but couldn't do other games exactly like their arcade counterparts.

 

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it's a home console vs a more powerful dual crt arcade game with custom hardware meant for it.

 

How would I know anything about the hardware of either the arcade machines or the NES back then? Where do you think I would have found such information? At the library? Look up "Punch-Out" and "Nintendo Entertainment System" in the card catalog? By the way, dual CRTs has nothing to do with graphics and sound capabilities. I knew that the only arcade game I'd played on the NES was the same as the actual arcade game in terms of graphics, sound, and gameplay, and had no way of knowing that wasn't a typical scenario, until I saw how downgraded its Punch-Out game was compared to the arcade.

 

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That's like getting upset that your NES can't make TMNT2 a perfect copy, or why can't SNES truly do Killer Instinct?  The game had to be adapted not only to the limits of the internal hardware which was given a one off special MMC2 special chip to allow those large and animated sprites as it is, but also not having the same setup as the arcade you adapt to the d-pad 2 button solution best you can.  I mean I get the complaints, but don't see how someone could be disappointed so much to write all that either even more.

 

You're talking about things you know now. I'm sure that in 1987 you could have told me all about it; could have gone with me to the arcade, pulled out your Nintendo back door key, and shown me the custom hardware inside the SPO machine, and rattled off all the specs/capabilities, and then done the same for the NES.

 

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Up side, 4 years ago PO and SPO were added to the switch for $8 each, totally so worth it.

 

Emulated versions of arcade PO and SPO have lag. It's not a big deal on PO because that game is easy / slow-paced no matter how far along you are in the game, but on SPO it makes the fourth-and-higher Dragon Chan's kicks very hard to react in time to, whereas they are easy to react to on the real hardware. And the third-and-higher Super Macho Man has attacks that are very hard to react to even on the real hardware, let alone on emulation.

Edited November 2, 2022 by MaximRecoil

[mbd39]

1 hour ago, MaximRecoil said:

 

Explain to me, using only things you knew when you were 11 or 12 (assuming you were 11 or 12 before the World Wide Web existed), why the NES could do Excitebike exactly like the arcade Vs. Excitebike, but couldn't do other games exactly like their arcade counterparts.

 

I was 13 when we got a NES in 1989. My first console was Atari 2600, and we had a PC (which were not ideal for gaming at the time). I was quite used to console ports being different or inferior and it didn't bother me. I was happy to even be able to play the rough approximation of an arcade hit. Plus almost anything on NES seemed amazing compared to what I had been playing before at home.

 

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by mbd39

[Tanooki]

And I was 12 at that age and got NIntendo Club and Nintendo Power. They covered the Playchoice 10 in that era and made it clear it was the NES on a timed arcade system, so that's how I'd get why the NES Excitebike was basically the same as Vs and the PC10 versions, it was a nes for quarters.  Not trying to be a jerk to that first question, but that is how it went, I had the print magazine in the mail that said as much being a fun propaganda rag as it is.

 

How could you not get that arcade machines and home consoles were not dramatically different?  Up until the NES you had Coleco at best that struggled with ever blockier, crappier visuals going backwards with lesser quality audio to match, and sketchy control depending too, so it's not beyond imagination to think as much.  You're specifically being a smart ass to my posts and stumbling all over it in the process because when I wrote that, I was thinking of someone from the 80s, not the 2020s and what info was there when I did write that.  I played both of the boxers too in a pizza place near my old home then, so when it hit the NES I knew it wouldn't look or sound as nice, and I knew I couldn't plug 2 TVs together either, it was basic common sense.  NO matter how good the NES was at first mimicking the for first time arcade games right at home, that level of 'rlght' was the 1983-85 made stuff and it got more away from correct as the months went by.

 

And again, no I'm not talking about now, that's very much why I used TMNT2 when it came out.  Again, pizza place, I put dollars and dollars into TMNT(2) and when i saw it in NP I knew it wasn't going ot be as good, shit, no console was even 1/2 as good as what Konami pumped out by then, none of them were, even the Genesis in 1989 was pretty shitty until like 18mo later as they stumbled on their own sega arcade games.  In the late 80s NIntendo put multipage spread out about their MMC and pre-MMC chips and said what they did, high level specs, what they added and all, I could go find the issue if you want, so no I didn't have a real arcade key nor electronic understanding of an adult, but i could have opened up to page X and said, LOOK.

 

I get you're pissed because I'm nitpicking your narrative, but at least if you're going to argue, be rational instead of going into hysterics.  But then again, seeing your closing whining about perceived lag, which maybe based on your TV is an issue, but otherwise is utter bullshit if you do it on the device itself where that screen is setup not to do that with a direct feed.

 

I doubt I'll respond again on this, you're clearly very emotional right now, and it wouldn't be best to fluster your further.

[Cobra Kai]

I understand what MaximRecoil's point is, and there isn't any wrong answer on what games disappointed any individual. I think you guys are being harsh about it. We were kids.

 

I mean, you want to hear dumb? Here's my anecdote: I blind bought Double Dragon V for the Jaguar, without any research at all, just saw it on the rack at Electronics Boutique. I figured it was going to be just like the original trilogy, a side scrolling beat-em-up, with better graphics! Right? Took it home and it turned out to be one of the worst games of all time, let alone a 1 v 1 fighter as well. 

 

So, yeah it gets way more dumb out there than having unrealistic expectations about NES Punch Out. Lighten up.

[Frozone212]

Milon's secret castle. Was SO very pissed off. Also, whoever made Astyanax. Great cover art, huge potential but a massive slap in the face to a five year old. 

 

However the one true disappointment for me as a kid broke my heart. Now it's considered just plain bad but at the time, I Didn't know any better but GnG made me HATE the NES. I refused to play it after that and still do. One game ruined an entire system for me. I love the Wii, N64 and Gamecube but damn, Nintendo dropped the ball there. Seal of quality my ass.

[MaximRecoil]

49 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

I was 13 when we got a NES in 1989. My first console was Atari 2600, and we had a PC (which were not ideal for gaming at the time). I was quite used to console ports being different or inferior and it didn't bother me.

 

 

 

I was used to it too, which is why I said this in my original post:

 

"When I started playing it on Mike's Nintendo I was amazed, because the graphics, sound, and gameplay were all identical to the arcade machine. That was the first time I'd ever played a console game that was even close to its arcade counterpart, let alone identical."

 

40 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

And I was 12 at that age and got NIntendo Club and Nintendo Power. They covered the Playchoice 10 in that era and made it clear it was the NES on a timed arcade system, so that's how I'd get why the NES Excitebike was basically the same as Vs and the PC10 versions, it was a nes for quarters.  Not trying to be a jerk to that first question, but that is how it went, I had the print magazine in the mail that said as much being a fun propaganda rag as it is.

 

I suspected you didn't actually read my post. As I said in my original post, I first played MTPO in late 1987 or early 1988; winter either way, so your Nintendo Power magazine, which didn't yet exist, couldn't have helped you explain anything:

 

"Nintendo Power was a video game news and strategy magazine from Nintendo of America, first published in July/August 1988 as Nintendo's official print magazine for North America."

 

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How could you not get that arcade machines and home consoles were not dramatically different?

 

Is that a joke? I saw with my own two eyes that Excitebike was the same as the arcade machine I'd been playing regularly for the past year or so, so in that case they absolutely weren't "dramatically different," nor different at all, since the Vs. System literally used the same architecture as the NES/Famicom.

 

50 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Up until the NES you had Coleco at best that struggled with ever blockier, crappier visuals going backwards with lesser quality audio to match, and sketchy control depending too

 

As I said in my original post:

 

"When I started playing it on Mike's Nintendo I was amazed, because the graphics, sound, and gameplay were all identical to the arcade machine. That was the first time I'd ever played a console game that was even close to its arcade counterpart, let alone identical."

 

52 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

You're specifically being a smart ass to my posts and stumbling all over it in the process because when I wrote that, I was thinking of someone from the 80s, not the 2020s and what info was there when I did write that.

 

You were apparently thinking of a time traveler in the '80s, who jumped ahead about 6 months and read the first issue of Nintendo Power.

 

55 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I played both of the boxers too in a pizza place near my old home then, so when it hit the NES I knew it wouldn't look or sound as nice, and I knew I couldn't plug 2 TVs together either, it was basic common sense.

 

Who said anything about plugging two TVs together? And no, technical knowledge of console and arcade hardware doesn't even remotely fall into the category of common sense.

 

57 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

NO matter how good the NES was at first mimicking the for first time arcade games right at home, that level of 'rlght' was the 1983-85 made stuff and it got more away from correct as the months went by.

 

The Punch-Out arcade hardware was created in 1983; that's the copyright date on the PCBs and the control panel overlay. It was released in early 1984. Punch-Out was an older game than Excitebike; in fact, the Vs. Excitebike arcade machine that I started playing in 1985 replaced the Punch-Out machine that I played in 1984.

 

You didn't know any more about it than I did, your tacit assertion that you're a time traveler notwithstanding. You may have assumed that the NES Punch-Out game wouldn't look or sound as nice as the arcade versions, based on past consoles, but I didn't make that assumption, because I had seen a NES game look and sound exactly like an arcade game, one that was newer than Punch-Out no less. I had no way of knowing that Vs. Excitebike wasn't running on true arcade hardware. From my perspective, if it was at the arcade it was an arcade game, simple as that.

 

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I get you're pissed because I'm nitpicking your narrative, but at least if you're going to argue, be rational instead of going into hysterics.

 

Comical Irony Alert (see above). Also, since there's no emotive language at all in any of my posts, your attempt to redefine the terms "pissed" and "hysterics" is dismissed.

 

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

But then again, seeing your closing whining about perceived lag, which maybe based on your TV is an issue, but otherwise is utter bullshit if you do it on the device itself where that screen is setup not to do that with a direct feed.

 

You have no idea what you're talking about. I have the TG world record high score on arcade SPO and I've recently topped it by over a million points. Go ahead and name someone who knows the game better than I do. Zallard1 has the second place record, and is one of the best all-around Punch-Out series players in the world, and he will tell you the exact same thing about lag on emulated arcade PO and SPO. The lag has always been there in MAME and the emulation on the Switch, which Zallard1 has played a lot of, is no better.

 

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I doubt I'll respond again on this, you're clearly very emotional right now, and it wouldn't be best to fluster your further.

 

More attempts to redefine words / serve up a crystal ball reading.

[NE146]

It's funny because I was fully familiar with Punchout and Super Punchout in the arcades, but I don't recall thinking at all that NES Punchout differed from the originals  I think probably because the music, animation, etc. etc. were so BEYOND what we were used to at the time with home video games (if not for you, at least for me) that all we ended up seeing was its awesomeness.

 

That said.. it wasn't a long time later that I started really seeing the differences between the arcade games I wanted and the NES versions.. in particular with Ninja Gaiden (as I posted earlier), and then later Strider. Although I guess Donkey Kong should have been a huge hint a few years before. 😛

[MaximRecoil]

46 minutes ago, NE146 said:

It's funny because I was fully familiar with Punchout and Super Punchout in the arcades, but I don't recall thinking at all that NES Punchout differed from the originals  I think probably because the music, animation, etc. etc. were so BEYOND what we were used to at the time with home video games (if not for you, at least for me) that all we ended up seeing was its awesomeness.

To me the differences stood out like a sore thumb, but I was playing arcade SPO just about every day at the time, and had been for the past year or so. After my initial disappointment it did grow on me somewhat. It's not one of my all-time favorite games, but it's still fun to play. I remember renting it after I got my own NES in 1988 or 1989. I had a NES Advantage and I thought maybe it would feel more like the arcade game using that. It did a little bit, though the joystick on the NES Advantage feels drastically different than a Nintendo arcade joystick, plus it's 8-way whereas the PO and SPO joysticks have a 4-way restrictor.

 

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That said.. it wasn't a long time later that I started really seeing the differences between the arcade games I wanted and the NES versions.. in particular with Ninja Gaiden (as I posted earlier), and then later Strider. Although I guess Donkey Kong should have been a huge hint a few years before.

 

I had Ninja Gaiden, but back then I never even knew an arcade version existed. I never played the NES port of Donkey Kong back then, but I wouldn't have noticed a difference even if I had, because the only time I played arcade DK was when I was 6 years old, in the entryway of a Kmart or Zayre in Bangor.

 

In 1987/1988, it wasn't far fetched for a home console to come close to matching the new or fairly new arcade games. The PC Engine was released in 1987 in Japan and that was far more powerful than the NES. The Neo Geo console was released in 1990 which actually was true arcade hardware, not that anyone that I knew could afford one. I think that any of the main "16-bit" consoles (PCE/TG-16, Sega Genesis, SNES) could have done an ~accurate port of arcade PO or SPO in terms of graphics and music / sound effects, though I don't know about the speech synthesis. I know the SNES could do it, since it did clear speech in more than one game, including its own version of SPO.

[bubufubu]

1 hour ago, NE146 said:

That said.. it wasn't a long time later that I started really seeing the differences between the arcade games I wanted and the NES versions.. in particular with Ninja Gaiden (as I posted earlier), and then later Strider.

To be clear, Ninja Gaiden (Arcade, 1988) has absolutely nothing to do with the 8-bit game released the same year.  Completely separate games.  They were made, simultaneously, by different teams at Tecmo.  Ninja Gaiden was released in October of 1988 while Ninja Ryūkenden was released two months later.  The former didn't receive a port until many, many years later.  To my knowledge, there is no 8-bit version of the former nor is there an arcade version of the latter.

[MrTrust]

20 minutes ago, bubufubu said:

To my knowledge, there is no 8-bit version of the former nor is there an arcade version of the latter.

 

There were several in Europe under the title Shadow Warriors.  

[NE146]

14 minutes ago, bubufubu said:

To be clear, Ninja Gaiden (Arcade, 1988) has absolutely nothing to do with the 8-bit game released the same year.  Completely separate games.  They were made, simultaneously, by different teams at Tecmo.  Ninja Gaiden was released in October of 1988 while Ninja Ryūkenden was released two months later.  The former didn't receive a port until many, many years later.  To my knowledge, there is no 8-bit version of the former nor is there an arcade version of the latter.

Interesting! 'Course though in 1988 no one here knew that, especially me. 😜   I just knew I liked Ninja Gaiden and was pretty excited to see it was coming to the NES. I would squint at the preview maps in Nintendo Power and would be dubious with all the extra stuff, but hopeful it would have at least a proximity of the arcade gameplay. It didn't.. but ended up being its own awesome game (which I eventually mastered). 

 

It's funny though that by the time the Lynx port came out, I had pretty much moved on from my obsession with the arcade game and never bothered getting it until decades later.

 

 

[bubufubu]

10 minutes ago, MrTrust said:

There were several in Europe under the title Shadow Warriors.  

Ah, I forgot about that alternate title for the arcade game.  I must have only been associating it with the localization of Ninja Ryūkenden GB: Matenrō Kessen (Game Boy, 1991).  My mistake.  Thanks for the correction.

[mbd39]

I was intrigued by NES Ninja Gaiden as soon as I saw the back of the box at the video store as a kid. It looked like it would be amazing, and it was.

 

I remember the local Subway had a Ninja Gaiden arcade cabinet as well. For people who think the NES game is that hard, the arcade game is a quarter munching beast from the start. The violent continue screen probably the most memorable thing about it, and you would have been seeing it a lot.

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by mbd39

[Razzie.P]

18 hours ago, MaximRecoil said:

 

I already wrote about why I expected it to look and play just like the arcade, i.e., Excitebike did, so why couldn't any other arcade game? I didn't know anything about computer hardware when I was 11 and 12. I knew from experience that previous consoles couldn't match arcade games, but the Nintendo was brand new to the US at the time, and the first game I played on it was a perfect match for the arcade game I'd been playing for the past year or so (Vs. Excitebike wasn't running on true arcade hardware, but I had no way of knowing that at the time).

 

My experience as a kid was the opposite of yours, it seems.  I always expected arcade versions to “be better” than the home versions.   So when I finally played the arcade version of Excitebike (which I really liked on NES) I was super disappointed and wondering why they scaled it back and made it no better than the home version.

[Wayler]

Can't say I was ever disappointed in our NES game acquisitions as a kid. I'm sure we made requests and had high hopes for the heavy hitters like SMB 1-3, Mega Man 3-5 etc and they always lived up to expectations. But to my recollection, most game purchases were made by my dad without much of our input. It was always a great occasion to get a new game. In the end we had around 15 titles and not a single dud. Would have been nice to know what his method was. 

 

But the disappointments came when loaning games from friends. A top one that comes to mind is Track & Field II. We had Blades of Steel which was super fun, so more sports from Konami was surely a winner. But it quickly turned into frustrating because I never could get into the brutal controls, it felt like torture. I never could get decent scores on the events that required button mashing.

 

I purchased the game as an adult when got into collecting again. Still hate it. 

[ChildOfCv]

As a kid I always wished the home version could be as good as the arcade, at least in playability.  I remember getting good enough on the Colecovision to play Donkey Kong and DKJr for hours, then going to the arcade and finding myself still a total novice because they were so different. DK CV didn't have the wild barrels or the blue ones.  He was invincible to the barrels while holding the hammer, vs the arcade where bad timing with the hammer will let one bowl you over while you were on the upswing, things like that.  Then of course there was the missing level on each of them.

 

So I do understand the people complaining about the NES versions of arcades not being even close.  It's as if you have to learn two different games of the same name.  And I do remember seeing pictures of MTPO and thinking to myself "That's not even close to the arcade.  WTF?"  Fortunately, it carved out its own identity and has enough nuance to be fun in its own right.

[MaximRecoil]

4 hours ago, ChildOfCv said:

As a kid I always wished the home version could be as good as the arcade, at least in playability.  I remember getting good enough on the Colecovision to play Donkey Kong and DKJr for hours, then going to the arcade and finding myself still a total novice because they were so different.

 

I think gameplay differences are are a lot worse than graphics and sound differences, and in many, if not most, cases, gameplay differences aren't due to hardware limitations, but rather, they are due to someone simply deciding they want to change it.

 

The first time I played an arcade port on a console that had the ~same gameplay as its arcade counterpart (not counting the Excitebike thing, because the "arcade version" was just the NES game to begin with) was when I bought Street Fighter II: The World Warrior for my SNES soon after it was released. I was already good at the original arcade version at the time, which I'd been playing regularly for about a year, and the SNES version had practically identical gameplay, so I was automatically good at it right from the get-go. I was very impressed with that port, especially considering how much more powerful the Capcom CPS-1 arcade hardware is than the SNES hardware, and how much more ROM data the arcade boardset has than the SNES cartridge (over 7 MB vs 2 MB).

Edited November 5, 2022 by MaximRecoil

[Bloodreign]

I can think of 2 in my collection right away, Hydlide and Day Dreamin Davey. Hydlide I believe was a 1983 PC game that was ported to the NES in 89, hardly a time to bring this game out, instead of earlier in the consoles lifespan. The Indiana Jones type theme song plays in an infinite loop while you play, could cause you to go berserk. Davey on the other hand, put out by HAL Labs, hardly as good as anything else they put out on the NES.

[+Pat Brady]

On 11/5/2022 at 9:14 AM, MaximRecoil said:

I think gameplay differences are are a lot worse than graphics and sound differences, and in many, if not most, cases, gameplay differences aren't due to hardware limitations, but rather, they are due to someone simply deciding they want to change it.

 

Or they just didn't have the resources (time and access to an arcade cabinet) to learn the details of the arcade game, or the resources (time and ROM space) to implement them.

[MaximRecoil]

The Adventures of Bayou Billy is another one. It stands out in my mind because it was the first time I ever rented a video game (renting video games was a new thing in my area at the time), and it was a new release that was supposed to be good, being from Konami and all. It starts out as a brawler type game, but the fighting mechanics are terrible. In Double Dragon, Final Fight, and all other good brawler games, the enemy is stunned by a punch or kick allowing for rapid followup punches/kicks until they go down. That doesn't happen in The Adventures of Bayou Billy. You're lucky to even get two hits in a row on even the first enemies you encounter. Hit detection isn't great either. Also, a jump kick in a brawler game should knock low-level enemies down with one hit, but not in this game. It doesn't seem to do any more damage than a normal punch or kick.

 

I already said that I was disappointed by the NES port of Double Dragon in comparison to the arcade version, but it's way better than The Adventures of Bayou Billy. At least it has halfway decent fighting mechanics.

Edited November 20, 2022 by MaximRecoil

[+wongojack]

2 hours ago, MaximRecoil said:

The Adventures of Bayou Billy is another one.

Yes!

[mbd39]

I liked Bayou Billy when I rented as a kid. The stage variety was novel at the time. I expected games to be hard back then so the high difficulty didn't bother me.

 

I like it even more now because I can beat it.

 

[newtmonkey]

Jaws

One Christmas, I was given a choice between The Legend of Zelda and Jaws.  I chose Jaws because the box art for Zelda looked "boring" and I figured, how can you go wrong with Jaws?  That was a very disappointing Christmas.

 

Hudson's Adventure Island

I rented this on recommendation from a friend, because I couldn't find it for sale anywhere.  Based on how my friend was describing it, it sounded like a sprawling adventure with you traveling from island to island finding secrets.  I was very disappointed to find that is a very basic side scroller, even simpler than Super Mario Bros. is some ways.  In hindsight, it's a fine game, but I remember at the time being VERY happy that I chose to rent it instead of blind buying it.

[Tanooki]

Jaws isn't even bad, for a LJN game it maybe near their best, but it is a kick in the teeth against that Zelda choice.

 

Hudson though, I get it, that's a game you either love or hate because of the mechanics of it.  Pudgy little dope can't take a hit, and his life creeps away fairly fast as a timer, but if the guy eats and eats, the timer extends which is fairly obnoxious.  Might as well call it his diabetes meter, can't allow a crash, go go go.

[mbd39]

Adventure Island seems like a very basic platformer until it gets sadistically hard. It's the insane degree of challenge in the later levels that makes the game stand out.