Board 8 > Jeff Gerstmann has taken it upon himself to rank every NES game

(+) Yeah! (+)

what in the fuck is that back to the future game

gilligans island seemed like it might be neat if you know what youre doing?

Back to the Future has a AVGN episode

Yeah that Gilligans Island game has some novel concepts but it doesnt all work great. Same can be said for most of Human Entertainments output. Theres definitely a line you can draw from the design of Gilligans Island to their later stuff line Clock Tower, S.O.S., and Twilight Syndrome

I don't think I've ever actually seen Monster Party before (aside from "Sorry, I'm dead"). Kind of in love with that game's aesthetic.

I've always thought the first level of Battletoads was amazing, the second level was still alright but no where near that first level, and then it continues to divebomb from there.

17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LlHlnR7IqU

00:00:00 - intro
00:09:58 - Kid Icarus
00:56:22 - Chiller
01:13:08 - Cabal
01:28:38 - Pictionary
01:57:10 - Cobra Triangle
02:16:50 - Q*Bert
02:25:53 - Town & Country Surf Designs II: Thrilla's Surfari

only experience i have with kid icarus is playing a little bit of the gameboy version. from what i remember i didnt care for it

and good ol chiller. i played it on the maxi 15 cart. i liked that thing even though almost if not everything on it was shit.

Kid Icarus got robbed. I guess it's understandable to get turned off by how unforgiving the first couple levels are though.

pictionary is neat but those puzzles are kinda shit

and thrillas surfari is uh something. not what i was expecting for a sequel. Game Over dude

Another of my noms next week already announced with Fester's Quest

Him putting Cobra Triangle ahead of Temco Bowl kinda made my blood pressure rise lol
I can't in my head rationalize that.

Also, he never saw the rest of Kid Icarus. That game drastically changes into a dungeon crawler, a side scroller, and a horizontal shump. Wonder how he would rank it if he knew.

That's just science

Hes played Kid Icarus before in his life, pretty sure he knows about the other level types

Started watching a few.

- I might've been damaged as a child because I liked (???) Deadly Towers once I found the hidden spots to not get abducted to the backrooms.

- In keeping with Stockholm Syndrome, Battletoads. Huh. I basically always made it to level 8 before game-over-no-continues. That game peaked during Surf City anyways.

- FUCK RC PRO-AM AND ITS RANDOM "I WIN NOW" CPU.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Hes played Kid Icarus before in his life, pretty sure he knows about the other level types

He said he completely forgot about that when chat brought it up

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Hes played Kid Icarus before in his life, pretty sure he knows about the other level types

He stated "I didn't even know this game had horizontal levels" or something along those lines
30:33 in the video

Gerstmann ranked again last night (because a kid is sick again!) and he had some insane things to say about Mega Man X (after ranking Mega Man 1). And then he cut kind of early because he was feeling sick too. Oof

also I was inspired to play Kid Icarus for real for the first time and yeah, that game is pretty frustrating. Died a ton on 1-3 because I was getting swarmed by Octorok things from below.

but eventually I made it through to 1-4 and that felt pretty good. Might keep going with it. Theres something compelling about it.

Kid Icarus' difficulty curve is just a slide lol, if you can beat world 1 you can beat the whole game no problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asObqPb_sgc

00:04:30 - Mega Man
00:58:00 - Shadow of the Ninja
01:15:38 - Palamedes
01:36:22 - Maniac Mansion
02:01:52 - Dug Dug II: Trouble in Paradise
02:15:52 - Pipe Dream
02:36:23 - Gremlins 2: The New Batch

i think dig dug 2 is a thing i played. i remember liking it but i have like no memories of it
played shadow of the ninja a bit on nso. didnt care for it
caught a run of gremlins on ESA but dont remember anything about it really

oh and i played mega man. only on the anniversary collection though. 2 and 3 are the only ones i played on an nes

Kenri posted...

Kid Icarus' difficulty curve is just a slide lol, if you can beat world 1 you can beat the whole game no problem

yeah I got a bit hung up on 1-4 because of the eggplant wizards, but I got through it and just blazed through 2-1, 2-2, and 2-3

Yeah I tried several times to get past world 1 over years, and then I beat the game the one time I got past it.

Dig Dug 2 is super fun, he didn't even try to play it before getting himself killed and quitting. I can't understand what he found so frustrating or offensive about it lol

Surskit posted...

Dig Dug 2 is super fun, he didn't even try to play it before getting himself killed and quitting. I can't understand what he found so frustrating or offensive about it lol

Yeah I can't speak to the game's quality but spending 4 minutes on it and then going "this shit sucks" and quitting was pretty bizarre considering how many absolutely awful games he's spent 40+ minutes on.

I appreciate that Mega Man 1 got a decent ranking, even though it's considered sort of a black sheep nowadays I think it gets graded on an unfair curve compared to its sequels and it's still a step ahead of most NES games

Kenri posted...

Yeah I can't speak to the game's quality but spending 4 minutes on it and then going "this shit sucks" and quitting was pretty bizarre considering how many absolutely awful games he's spent 40+ minutes on.

I think he generally tends to do a decent job (or at least seems to do a decent job) of putting his personal feelings aside in the name of "science".

Kenri posted...

Yeah I can't speak to the game's quality but spending 4 minutes on it and then going "this shit sucks" and quitting was pretty bizarre considering how many absolutely awful games he's spent 40+ minutes on.

he already knew he hated the game from past experience, and its not particularly complex, so four minutes told him all he needed to know

Also he spent a longer than usual amount of time talking about it after he was done playing where he laid out some of the context

19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XulBxMzF0_k

00:00:00 - Intro
00:07:15 - The Goonies II
00:37:30 - Duck Hunt
00:55:15 - Remote Control
01:18:49 - Fester's Quest
01:52:28 - Elevator Action
02:02:55 - Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight
02:32:11 - Zen Intergalactic Ninja

oh hey duck hunt

Street Fighter 2010 is a game that forces you to learn its rules quickly and if you dont do that you will have a bad time. Jeff did not learn its rules (he did start to pick up on some stuff after getting through the first stage). Also I think he was accidentally mashing past some cutscenes, not that it would have improved its rating at all

I was responsible for Fester's Quest this week you're welcome

ive seen the name festers quest alot but ive never seen. didnt know it was addams family either. i also didnt look very good

never heard of zen. seems neat but uh maybe not neat to play

European version of Festers Quest made the bullets able to go through walls and reduced enemy health, it makes a big difference.

alert alert

supplemental episode streaming now

said supplemental episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oScprjmSIO0

I spent a few hours playing the GBC version of DW after the stream, and at some point looked up a guide because I felt like I didnt know where to go

but it turned out I did know where to go, the game really does just expect you to grind a ton

jeff may have overrated this one

The non-RNG manipulation speedrun beats the game at level 18, while the average player probably beats it at 19 or 20. Theres only a little bit of wiggle room on strategy versus just having bigger numbers to make the difference.

MoogleKupo141 posted...

but it turned out I did know where to go, the game really does just expect you to grind a ton

that said you can finish the whole game in under 10 hours it's just grinding is 7-8 of those hours

oh yeah, thanks to the magic of fast forward on an emulator, Im pretty close to finishing

The way he was playing Festers Quest by collecting every red 'Gun' he saw (Even after being told) was absolutely infuriating me lol. It went on for so long till he stopped.

Hes colorblind so it took him a while to even notice they were different

i also encouraged Jeff to play Rollergames in Sebmals chat, so it was fun to see that actually get played today. Feels like I got to make a recommendation without spending $20

honestly it didnt seem quite as bad to me as Jeff made it out, maybe Ill try it for myself later

The movement feels weird. Kinda fitting for a game where youre on rollerblades but can definitely be off-putting.

Episode 20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPQwv8ztXHE

00:00:00 - Intro
00:05:40 - Rollergames
00:38:34 - Castlevania
01:19:50 - Dragon Spirit: The New Legend
01:54:05 - Micro Machines
02:13:39 - Snow Bross
02:33:15 - Spot: The Video Game

Jeff finally putting Micro Machines in its place

I didn't bad mouth it when I was a kid because my little brother liked it and I didn't want him to feel bad

I want to see Megaman 2 and Megaman 3 score.

21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYAdYBLgDTA

00:00:00 - Intro
00:09:49 - Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
01:00:23 - Jordan vs. Bird: One-on-One
01:20:40 - Whomp 'Em
01:43:48 - Silver Surfer
02:13:30 - Conquest of the Crystal Palace

only 5 games this week. maybe punch out shouldve got its own special episode!

"theres something sexual and forbidden about bald bulls mouth" is certainly a quote

never heard of that crystal castle game. ya go my kim

Punch out is cool but shouldn't be on every nes top 10

It was my #9 NES game from over a decade ago despite not really growing up with it, and I feel like the game aged well since then if you don't count Tyson.

Doesn't surprise me to see it consistently so well in people's lists.

I think Mike Tyson's Punch-Out is one of the very rare NES games where, unless you're already personally familiar with it, a modern understanding of video games doesn't teach you how to play it immediately. If you've never played a Punch-Out game before and you play MTPO, figuring out how to play well is not going to be obvious to you until you've practiced it quite a bit. There aren't a lot of games on the NES I can think of that are like this - most of them are fairly easily 'solved' by the accumulated knowledge and skill of any modern gamer but MTPO remains mysterious and challenging. It's a weirdly well-aged game in that way. I think it'd be kind of fun to make a list of NES games that are challenging for a modern audience because of their unique game design (not just because they are super hard and unforgiving).