NES Stealth Sim

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I was reading recently about stealth aircraft including the F-117A Nighthawk when I remembered there was a NES game with that particular fighter craft in the title role. Sure enough: F-117A Stealth Fighter, and it’s not in the database yet. The title screen bears a 1992 copyright date. What I’m trying to figure out is whether the game is a NES platform port of the game Night Hawk: F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0 that was released for DOS in 1991, Amiga in 1993, and Mac in 1994. Same company: MicroProse.

In fact, MicroProse published the first combat flight sim I ever played: F-15 Strike Eagle. It was also the first game my family bought for our brand new 8088-based PC right before Christmas in 1984. Therefore, the game would have to have been released in 1984, contrary to MobyGames’ release date of 1985 for the PC booter version. Regrettably, the discs and box are long gone so I have no evidence to back this up. I only bring it up as it is remains a longstanding point of friendly contention between myself and one of MobyGames’ founding fathers, Trixter (I’ll never let it go!).

But I digress in a major way… I was curious to see exactly how one might pull off a flight simulator on the NES. Flight sims are among the more complicated — and therefore feared, by me — games that one can undertake. That old F-15 Strike Eagle game used quite a bit of the keyboard and I was curious to see how MicroProse could execute a combat flight sim with only 8 input buttons (up, down, left, right, select, start, B, and of course, A). The answer turns out to be combinations of buttons (e.g., B+select to switch from map to radar view) and unintuitive navigation through option menus.

I found the actual gameplay very frustrating, much more so than the F-15 from 8 years prior (that’s right! Eight years, not seven! I’ll never drop the issue!). The controls were much less responsive and the graphics much worse than that old PC booter game. Both graphics systems had severe weaknesses to overcome. The PC had its 4-color 320×200 bit-plane raster display. The NES had its tile-addressed 256×224 display capable of a few more colors. It was hard to make anything out in either game. Now that I think about it, this game did have better enemy plane representations. F-15 basically had wire mosquitos. This had sprite drawings at different sizes. Though I found it suspicious that there were never any clouds in the sky at the same time enemy planes were in your sights.

It didn’t take long before I got so frustrated that I wanted to kill myself. I sure couldn’t count on death-by-combat since no matter how many missile strikes I sustained, my craft still remained airworthy. Time to take a bath. You wouldn’t believe how long it took to plunge straight down into the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and Libya. Long enough to write plenty of notes detailing why this game probably won’t make my list of games to replay sometime.

Perhaps the most notable feature of this game is its use of digitized voices, longer than I have heard in any other game yet (not very long, but still).

See Also:

F-117A Stealth Fighter (NES) entry in MobyGames
In May of 2020, this game was released on the Steam store

Bikini Beach Stunt Racer

Posted on April 7, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I can already tell that April is going to be a fairly busy month and that this blog will go neglected for days at a time. That said, I just got 4 more fresh games from another eBay seller yesterday. And one of the titles was just too good to delay playing.

A.k.a. Beach King Stunt Racer (probably the European title as the manual comes in 4 languages), Bikini Beach Stunt Racer is the story of a courageous beach enthusiast’s quest to gather diamonds and perform dune buggy stunts in order to win bikini-clad feminine approval. The goal is to select one of three beach boys (stereotypical surfer jock, stereotypical food-obsessed party animal, or stereotypical drunken lush) and one of three tropical locales (St. Tropez, Bali, or Rio), and then drive your indestructible dune buggy around performing totally extreme stunts in order to earn the affection of the locale’s mascot lady. You might think risking your life performing silly stunts would be enough, but oh my goodness, no! She wants diamonds, too. Along the course, find 7 diamonds that complete her ring.

Examine the in-game screenshot:

In the upper left hand corner, you will observe the Babe-O-meter. This is the babe (Ms. St. Tropez in this example) you are currently trying to impress. She sits inside her ring which will show the diamonds as they are collected.

That screenshot showcases a rather serious but altogether enjoyable bug in the game. Sometimes when I would start the course, the dune buggy would jump 100 meters in the air and show incredible views of the modeled landscape while allowing me to twist and turn and get incredible scores, thus throwing the babe into throes of wild ecstacy, even if I didn’t survive after hitting the ground (the character doesn’t die, he just has to restart the level and with the same bug manifesting). We’ll chalk that up to a bug in the 3D engine. Here’s a slightly less severe bug in the same engine, though still disorienting:

Bikini Beach Stunt Racer -- Strange shadow

It seems that the light source in this case is the sand, hence the shadow on the wall.

At first, this game is just obnoxious. But with a little practice, it actually becomes somewhat enjoyable after I start understanding how some of the stunts are supposed to play. Maybe with this, I’ll finally have the courage to try the stunt modes in Skateboard Park Tycoon. There is apparently a rich variety of outlandish stunts to perform in this game. Check out the intro video for the game which showcases all manner of physics-defying dune buggy stunts (my favorite is when the surfer dude surfs on some rocks that his ride is flying next to):

Everything in this game comes in groups of 3 with an unlockable fourth: 3 beach racers (with an unlockable fourth, an Elvis impersonator character, perhaps a cliche of a typical beach if I were ever to visit one), 3 locales (with an unlockable fourth, Daytona), and 3 bikini babes (with an unlockable fourth corresponding to Daytona).

And if you can’t play the game, I’m sure the next best thing will be to view the gallery of eponymous bikini babes on offer. The CD-ROM has 16 ending videos (AVI/MS MPEG-4v2/PCM), depicting the outcome of completing the various courses with the available characters. Ms. St. Tropez here will be depicted as washing the winner’s dune buggy while the man does something clumsy while gawking at her.

Bikini Beach Stunt Racer -- St. Tropez Harbour

This is Ms. Bali, who will come running at the winner in romantic slow motion, her arms spread for the embrace, while the man always ruins the moment somehow and Ms. Bali is reduced to shaking her head in disbelief.

Bikini Beach Stunt Racer -- Bali Village

During her ending, Ms. Rio is depicted as dancing provocatively on a floating platform while the winner comes up to her dressed as that character’s stereotypical passion (surf board, ice cream cone, or bottle). Invariably, the character falls flat in the oversized costume while Ms. Rio keeps on dancing.

Those ending descriptions cover what happens for the first 3 unlocked characters. The same sequences ensue for the unlockable Elvis impersonator but always end up with him performing some dance that makes the woman faint. It’s all very abstract. Either that, or I simply don’t get it.

At MobyGames:

Bikini Beach Stunt Racer

See Also:

Bikini Beach Stunt Racer Archived at Internet Archive

Sabrina Joan Hart

Posted on April 3, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Yeah, it’s been a bit slow the last few days on this blog. I’ve been working on a few non-gaming commitments recently. Plus, I thought I would give the MobyGames approvers a chance to catch up on submissions. My most recently approved entries are:

And as if I didn’t have enough games to work through, some of those eBay-ordered games referenced last week arrived tonight. I’ll have you know that I did sit down and play that Sabrina: The Teenage Witch game briefly. Though it sounded characteristically lame and therefore well-suited for this blog, it seems that a bunch of my IM buddies have fond memories of the show on which the game is based, or at least were infatuated with the show’s star, one Melissa Joan Hart. Apparently, I’m the only one completely ignorant of this show’s premise, stars, and characters.

Sabrina The Teenage Witch -- with Salem the Cat

I didn’t say I spent a whole lot of time on the game. Maybe 10 minutes total. It’s another Macromedia-driven, kid-targeted game. I hate to admit it, but even these are starting to wear on me, or I might just not be in the mood tonight. The disc didn’t come with any instructions, nor was there a manual on-disc. I knew that didn’t matter– these games always verbally explain the game as you go along. The game chronicles your quest to become a witch like Sabrina. You start out with your witchcraft learner’s permit as a stepping stone to your full-fledged license. You have to successfully complete 7 spells to earn that distinction. Your first opportunity to do this is when Sabrina’s treacherous black cat, Salem (aside: why would the pet be named after the town synonymous with burning witches?), tricks Sabrina into turning herself into a pumpkin. Undo this spell by looking up the spell recipe and searching her room for the ingredients.

And, well, I suspect the game continues along that same formula for some time afterwards. And I’m afraid I will find out sooner or later.

Gran Turismo: NES

Posted on March 31, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I would like to start tonight’s entry with a neo-cubist geographical interpretation of the United States:

Formula One: Born To Win -- neo-cubism and the United States

Continuing with the high-speed theme from last night’s post, I made a push tonight to get more old NES racing games into MobyGames. I came to realize I was quite spoiled with the types of racing games I played on the NES and SNES. Games like The Adventures of Bayou Billy, The Mafat Conspiracy, Rad Racer II, RoadBlasters and F-Zero come to mind. These were pretty much “on-rails” where not much could go wrong. These games often involved munitions of some sort, too. So it was somewhat a shock to discover that the NES was capable of hosting more considerate and faithful racing games. In particular, I played 3 separate formula one racing games.

The first game is Formula One: Born To Win and it was the source of the above odd screenshot. The F-1 racing aspect is apparently something you have to earn your way up to. The game is more of a career racer in the vein of (what I make of) the popular Gran Turismo series. You begin the game with a Mini Cooper (well before their resurgent popularity!), compete in low-grade races, earn money to upgrade the vehicle to be more competitive, claw your way up the racing circuit, and eventually earn the opportunity to race Vector, Ferrari, and F-1 vehicles. I was a bit intimidated when I saw the stat screen:

Formula One: Born To Win -- Mini Cooper car check

Fortunately, when you screw up, the nice lady in the race official’s office advises you about what part of your car to upgrade to do better next time. For example, upgrade the chassis if bumping into another car causes you to spin out of control.

2 celebrity-licensed games I played were Michael Andretti’s World GP and Nigel Mansell’s World Championship Challenge. They each have 16 international courses for F-1 racing. However, Andretti’s title was easily the most intense racing experience I had yet seen on the NES. First, there was head-to-head, 2-player, split-screen racing which impressed me greatly. The racing action requires you to worry about shifting and if you corner too hard, you can easily spin out. This is a racer that takes some serious practice.

Split-screen 2-player starting line sequence in Michael Andretti’s World GP

Another racing game (I assumed it was such due the the word ‘race’ in its title) I played today was Death Race. After playing, and by sheer coincidence, I happened upon this review which alerted me to the fact that Death Race 2000 was a Sly Stallone movie made in 1975. This is the bad game of today’s bunch, hardly surprising considering it was an adaptation of a B-movie made 15 years prior and was further an unlicensed NES game published by an extraordinarily generic-sounding company named American Game Cartridges (proving that the only thing worse than licensed schlock is unlicensed schlock). Even stranger is that there was actually an arcade game based on the movie that made its way to video arcades in 1976. It was perhaps the first truly controversial video game if Wikipedia is to be believed on the matter. The thrust of the game is to soup up your car to run down pedestrians and win races by capturing flags and finding exit doors.

One final observation: Isn’t it oddly convenient that cars in 8-bit racers can never go faster than 255 distance units/hour?

NES Racing Grab Bag

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I continued to forestall the inevitable this evening by further delaying playing some of the most bizarre Sega CD games in existence. Instead, I finally collected a full set of quality screenshots for Vegas Fever Winner Takes All. You start this game with $1000 and I was consistently, cluelessly losing money at each game I played for screenshot purposes. Wouldn’t you know– on the last game I played, Texas Hold ’em Poker, I actually won a sizable pot and ended up with over $1000, even though I really had no idea what I was doing.

Vegas Fever Winner Takes All -- I won it all!

I’m so strategically-impaired that stubbornly calling bets and refusing to fold is probably the best strategy I could hope to employ in an actual Poker game. Through it all, though, I must say that if I were partial to gambling-type games, this would be my casino simulation game of choice. Beautiful, authentic, diverse, and it claims to be highly accurate to boot.

Otherwise, I spent the evening playing through a bunch of old NES games. The reason for this is that, vast as it is, MobyGames is still missing over 150 NES games (American NES games; that I know of). I’m hoping to fill some gaps. Among the NES games were 2 racing games, one good and one not so good. The good one is a title of which I have fond memories playing and winning back when my interest in the system was waning: Eliminator Boat Duel.

This is a fierce one on one boat racing game where you claw your way up through the ranks of pro boat racers, winning prize money, upgrading your boat and generally earning respect among the boat racing community. Your first opponent is a curiously aggressive hippie. I seem to recall that the final opponent in the game is a high-class lady who comes on to you after you defeat her in nitro-fueled boating fury. Another curious feature of the game is that sometimes the races will finish too close to call, visually. That’s when the eye candy on the sidelines requests a slo-mo replay:

Consistently tanned, they are. I’m sure that’s attributable to their disciplined bikini team tanning regimen and not due to any NES palette limitations.

The not so good (but not entirely bad) racing game was Galaxy 5000.

Race against 3 computer-controlled spaceships. There are 2 control schemes to choose from, both of which require some adaptation. The first is to press the gamepad in the direction you want to go and the craft rotates to point in that direction and thrust. The second control scheme uses left and right to rotate and up to thrust. I had trouble getting used to either and couldn’t get past the first Mercury race. That meant that the race course disintegrated out from under me and I fell — in space — apparently into some water.

Another interesting facet of the game is high-pitched, comical, digital voices exclaiming “Hey!” and “Watch it!” when you bump into other cars.

Break Night

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I decided to take a break considering the mental toll I’ve sustained due to the sheer absence of quality in all the Sega CD games over the past few days. The break should do me well while I psyche myself up mentally for the final push of Sega CD games (until I procure more). I will try to catch up on some game entry chores that have been stacking up. I still haven’t collected all the screenshots necessary for Vegas Fever Winner Takes All. The thing has a bunch of games. I start it up and try to play through them to get representative screenshots for each game but I find myself bored to tears after 2 or 3. They’re pretty but I just don’t care about these gambling games. I don’t know how I’m going to handle it when it’s time to tackle sporting games.

2 new games in MobyGames:

Please enjoy this demo video I scraped off of a LEGO CD-ROM game. Apparently, it comes from a title called LEGO Alpha Team. This seems to be LEGO’s answer to Konami’s Metal Gear Solid series:

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Author: Multimedia Mike