Hall of Shame: LJN 1989

bryan.eddy@newretrowave.com — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 22:43:27 +0000

We’ve been over the coals with LJN before. Not just me. Everyone has. I’m far from the first hack to put his fingers on a keyboard and write about this stuff, and it’s been established that 1) LJN games mostly sucked but 2) a couple of them didn’t. Well, these three sure do. All were released in 1989, seemingly to contrast tons of great NES titles released that year, before, and after. In fact, it seems as if LJN’s very purpose for a span of years was to produce terrible licensed games for any intellectual property they could wrangle.

I did not have to narrow this article down to three games. Out of mercy, I chose to.

Back To The Future (NES)

LJN/Beam Software, 1989

We all hoped this would be good, right? I mean, the 1985 film is undeniably one of the best things to have come out of the 80s, period. How can you screw this up?

Apparently the quick answer to that is, “let LJN handle it.”

When we turn our NES on, we’re greeted by a short, repetitive, and spiritually empty loop of music. Get used to this, because unless you mute your TV, it’s what you’ll be hearing for a while. The introductory level consists of a town street which, with or without you, moves forward at a steady pace. Everyone and everything on this street wants to hurt you, and that isn’t hard. Like, don’t even touch a fence or a bench. Marty’s pretty fragile. If you ever make it past this first stage, there’s a handful of others that are pretty much the same, broken up by a series of mini-games. Where have I heard that music before? Oh, that’s right, EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE GAME, FROM THE MOMENT I TURNED ON THE NES.

The world is a living hell no matter where you are in time.

Now, I understand the concept of making a game difficult so as to give it good replay value. No one wants a cake walk, especially not at the price point an NES cart sold for back then ($30-40 new). However, if you make it stupidly difficult AND have it look and sound like crap, people will feel like you stole that $30-40 from them and stuck a turd in their pocket as “collateral.” The combined elements of this game make it a capital offense. The graphics look more at home on a console from the previous generation, there are minimal sound effects (except for that AWESOME F*CKING MUSIC THAT PLAYS ON LOOP FOREVER), and it’s really hard to get into what you’re doing when a bench can kill you. The only saving graces are the diner and guitar mini-games, if you can make it to them.

LOOK GUYS IT’S JUST LIKE THE MOVIE

X-Men (NES)

LJN/Pixel, 1989

This time we’ve got a reliably cool and popular comic license, one that would later translate itself fairly well onto 16-bit systems and the arcade platform. This one writes itself; just get a good set of programmers and artists on it, and we’ll be golden, right?

Instead we got this weird top-down mess. More laughable art that seems to mock the characters represented more than anything else. We’ve got marginally better music than the previous title (in fact, the menu music is downright grooveworthy) but more Pong-style sound effects. Level design seems random and meandering; in fact, one could argue that the levels were just pieced together. Imaginative design also led to enemies like giant springs with googly eyes. It often seems like LJN had a sort of bland contempt for video game consumers. “You’ll buy anything.”

Well, that may have been true, and arguably still is today, but that’s beside the point.

Two-player action is easily ground to a halt by the fact that the characters move at very different speeds; it is, in fact, possible to get the slower character trapped behind something irrevocably, effectively killing the game. There’s also a set of clues combining things you learn from the game with information on the cartridge itself, and these clues are supposed to help unlock the final level. Enough with that kind of arcane bullshit, we all played Simon’s Quest and we had to buy that issue of Nintendo Power to get anywhere. Thankfully, Konami produced the X-Men arcade title and Sega handled the Genesis game.

Friday the 13th (NES)

LJN/Atlus, 1989

I will start with something positive: the title screen kicks ass.

Unfortunately, that’s where the ass-kicking ends, unless it’s Jason kicking kids’ asses off-screen while you try and fail to navigate your way to where it’s happening.

Oh, good. I’ll only have to look at this five or six thousand times every few minutes to find out I’ve gone halfway in the wrong direction.

The biggest issue most players have with this one is the absolutely counter-intuitive map interface. Think you’re going the right way? Better check… SURPRISE, YOU’RE NOT. Meanwhile, that car-horn sound you keep hearing? The one that seems to match up with the number of kids slowly decreasing? That’s Jason Voorhees, going nuts with a machete in a cabin on the other side of the camp. You’d like to get there in time to stop him, wouldn’t you? Tough shit. Don’t worry, though. Jason occasionally takes time out from frenzied streaks of infanticide to personally murder you at random. He is pretty much invincible until you achieve a bunch of stuff later in the game (while simultaneously keeping him from killing kids). In his absence, you’re accosted by waves of nondescript zombies, because LJN is all about phoning it in when it comes to details.

You like repetitive music loops, right? Because, while the instrumentation has gotten a little richer, the composition surely hasn’t. In fact, the music when you’re outside is probably even shorter and more annoying than the main theme from the Back to the Future game. Have fun listening to it while you get lost in the woods, looking for stuff you need in order to finish this game. At least here, you can throw away all pretense of the map being useful, because it does jack shit for you.

But hey, if you’re that committed to finishing this game, that’s your problem, not mine. You might want to get your head examined.

I’ll eventually get the wind up to talk down some more terrible games, but goodbye for now, RetroFans. See you in September for more articles and videos!

The Uncanny X-Men (1989)

NewRetroWave — Thu, 12 May 2016 14:40:32 +0000

With X-Men: Apocalypse headed to theaters later this month to continue the most prolific franchise in superhero cinema, now seems to be a good time to look back at the history of the X-Men heroes in gaming. As one of the most consistently popular strains of superhero comics, X-Men stories have actually inspired gaming releases for decades, beginning with a series of early console and arcade titles.

The releases continue to today, and in fact come out on so many different gaming platforms that one can’t help but be impressed by the popularity of X-Men games. For instance, Gigataur Corp ‘s collection of app games grew to include Uncanny X-Men: Days Of Future Past just last fall. It’s a take on some older X-Men arcade games with a storyline that loosely mimics the most recent X-Men film X-Men: Days Of Future Past, and offers a wide range of relevant characters for players to embody.

The X-Men have also gained a place in online casino gaming over the years, in the form of a few different but similar titles. Gambling.com’s page on these games shows a collection of nine X-Men characters on one title’s covers, and describes the game in which these characters essentially take over a slot reel. There are a few fun bonus features but the main thrill is simply playing a slot machine that’s been transformed into an X-Men exhibition.

Examples like these demonstrate how X-Men gaming has moved into new formats, to say nothing of the characters’ continued appearances in console games. But the point here is that none of these games would exist had it not been for the popularity and excellence of some of the earlier titles, which now fit neatly into the retro category. And the first of those titles is still one of the best.

The original Uncanny X-Men was developed for NES by the LJN gaming company. LJN gets a lot of criticism in retrospect, despite being succeeded by Acclaim Entertainment (which put out some pretty popular titles). But The Uncanny X-Men was a pretty fun arcade experience for its time.

It was essentially a vertically scrolling dungeon crawler that instead of using an invented fantasy realm or batch of characters used the X-Men. Players could choose to control any one of six X-Men heroes: Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Iceman. Two-player co-op play was also an option (given the two controllers on the NES), but even if you played solo there would be an AI partner fighting through levels alongside you.

The goal of the game was simply to battle through dungeon-like levels full of villainous creatures and other obstacles, ultimately making your way to a boss villain. There were five levels and five accompanying villains: Boomerang, Sabretooth, Juggernaut, The White Queen, and Magneto. Additionally, once the regular game was beaten, players could enter a special sequence on the control pad to access a sixth level in which Magneto was again the boss.

Like many impactful retro games, it now seems dated, and in particular the animations of characters are a bit of a letdown. Though the game provides each hero with an individual set of attacks (including a special that could only be used so often), the images of the characters didn’t do a whole lot to bring them to life. Still, as an old arcade dungeon crawler it was an enjoyable game packed with fun challenges and a variety of satisfying boss fights. And its legacy as the first major X-Men game to get off the ground looks more significant with each passing year.

The Uncanny X-Men – NewRetroWave – Stay Retro! | Live The 80's Dream!