Gyruss NES Review

This is a port of an arcade title by the same name.  Almost every NES arcade port is solid and so is this one.  This is a really fun arcade shoot em up that is the raster version of the vector classic Tempest.  You are basically trying to make your way towards Earth and start off at Neptune.  Every 3 screens or so you get a challenging stage and then a boss to fight.  The enemies come from the sides of the screen and then they go into the middle.  Your ship rotates around the middle and shoots inward towards the enemies just like tempest.  You get a double shot power up and eventually start collecting bombs that you can launch.  The game itself is fun and gets harder as you go on.  The music is pretty decent and the graphics are not bad for the NES.  Game play ranks pretty high up on the scale with this one.  Re playability is good as I find myself wanting to play the game every so often.  If you like shoot em ups, check this one out for something a little different and fun.  Overall, I give it a 7 out of 10.   

Elevator Action NES Review

Another port of an arcade game to the NES.  Pretty well done.  The purpose of this game is to go from the top of the building to the basement of the building where your get away car awaits.  There are many elevators, doors, and escalators in the building.  The elevators move on their own but you can also control them by pressing up and down when you enter them.  You have a gun with unlimited ammo to shoot the enemies who are also shooting at you.  You can also crouch and jump.  If you stand in front of a red door and press up, you can enter inside and get a secret file for bonus points.  You have to go into the red doors and get the files or you cannot clear the board.  The sound in the game is kind of generic, nothing special, and the game play is not that great.  What drives me crazy are the escalators.  You have to go all the way to one side and press diagonal down and to the left or right.  When you get off the escalator, sometimes there is an enemy there and you turn back but it goes back up instead.  Overall this game is pretty fun with some quirks here and there.  I give it a 5 out of 10 stars, nothing special but fun to play every now and then.    

Phoenix Atari 2600 Review

Arcade port for the 2600.  Pretty decent game overall.  It is what you expect fast for a VCS game.  There are 4 stages.  The first is small "demon birds", the second stage is small "demon birds" but you can hold the fire button down for rapid shot.  The third stage is big "demon bird" with wings that you can shoot off and they grow back.  You get no points for shooting their wings so it is better to just kill them.  The 4th and final stage is a mothership with an alien in the middle that lowers on you as you try and kill it.  When you kill it, it resets to the first board.  The point of the game is score and that is it.  Overall, I give it a 6 out of 10 stars.  Pretty good graphics for the 2600 and great shoot em up game play.  The sound sucks and is super annoying though, that is a huge negative for the game.

Pac-Man Atari 2600 Review

Alright, There are really no other screen shots to show.  This is it.  An arcade port that was rushed to come out for Christmas and resulted in a horrible game right?  Not quite.  The game is not all that horrible.  The graphics are not very good and the game play is super slow compared to the arcade, but this is an Atari 2600, not a powerful machine at all.  Most people played the game for 5 minutes and then said it was horrible.  The fact of the matter is, when you clear about 5 boards, it starts getting challenging.  It is a bad game, don't get me wrong, but it is not the worst game ever.  I am not a super huge Pac-Man fan anyway so I wouldn't really play this game much, but if you want a challenge, pop it in and clear the first 5 boards and then play the real game.  Overall, I give this game a 4 out of 10 stars (GASP!).  Try it, actually give it a chance.. It's not complete shit like you have been led to believe.  Come at it with a new seasoned gamers outlook..  :)

Need For Speed Underground Gamecube Review

This game is pretty awesome.  Underground (quest mode) and quick race mode are your options.  Playing the underground mode allows you to buy new cars, unlock upgrades and visual mods for your cars.  The graphics in this game are great for the Gamecube.  The music is awesome, a great mix of rock and rap of the time when this came out in 2001.  The game play is awesome.  You can pop this game in and end up playing it for over an hour or two.  It is quite addicting.  The only thing I dislike about the game is the fact that when you get towards the end of the game, it becomes tedious to try and win to move on.  You have to acquire points to unlock mods to continue at the higher stages which means basically switching back and forth between 2 vehicles.  One vehicle will be for handling and one for acceleration.  It is basically those two things you have to worry about.  The game has lots of different tracks and even runs them in reverse on some stages.  There is a Circuit mode where you just race laps and a sprint mode where you race to the finish.  There are also drift modes and drag racing modes which have their own style of play which you have to master.  Overall I give this game an 8 out of 10 stars.  Highly addictive and awesome to play.

Alpha Mission NES Review

This is supposed to be a port of an arcade game.  Not a good port at all.  I have played the arcade version before and it is pretty good.  This game is not good at all.  Unfortunately, shoot em ups on the NES are historically not good and this one falls right into place with that mantra.  It is super slow (that is not always a bad thing) and the game play is horrible. First off there are way too many power ups (yes, you can have too many power ups) and that makes the game not very fun.  When you upgrade your shot, it is still weak and the enemies move way to fast.  Don't get me wrong, I love a challenging game but if the game play sucks, it ruins the whole thing.  You can press select to go into a power up select mode and you have energy that depletes when you use these power ups.  The boss fights are super challenging because they move about 5 times faster than your ship does even when fully powered up.  It is also frustrating that you can't tell if you are doing damage to a boss because it appears that your shots pass right through them.  There is no sound of flash to indicate that you are doing damage.  The game kind of plays a lot like Xevious with a double shot and the slowness.  Overall I give the game 3 out of 10 stars.  This one will sit of the shelf for a long time.

Donkey Kong Classics NES Review

Donkey Kong Classics contains 2 games, the original arcade port of Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong Jr.  I am not going to review these games individually because everyone knows them.  They are both really close versions to the arcade and play quite well.  There is a difficulty select for each game.  Both of these games were released as single carts in the initial NES 30 release games.  Not really too much to say about this cart except that in true NES fashion, arcade games are well ported and represented here.  Overall, I give it a 8 out 10.  It does what it is supposed to do.  The only drawback is no pie factory level for Donkey Kong.  :(