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Chubby Cherub. These are the adventures of a hungry little cupid
as he goes on a quest to stuff his face with cupcakes by avoiding
angry beagles. The Official Nintendo Player's Guide of 1987 gave a
moving speech about the game: "Help Chubby Cherub chomp and
chase all day. He's depending on you!"
I'm not going to pretend to understand this game, all I know is that
this cartridge is a waste of plastic. They could have used the
plastic for bubble wrap or Jack in the Box Kid's Meal toys.
Chubby Cherub could fly through the air with his vacant grin, and
you could kill puppies by throwing hearts at them. This was done
using something he called the Gau-Gau cannon. Then he would
ravenously eat any little cakes or fruits you flew him too close to.
I once flew him into a corner and left for the evening without
turning off the Nintendo. When I came back, Chubby Cherub was
sitting on a huge pile of animal remains picking his teeth with one
of their ribs. It was pretty gross. |
Oh, Chubby Cherub! Gobble your way into my heart! |
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Graphics: 1 |
I'd rather not talk about them. Every time I think of Chubby
Cherub's ugly graphics, I picture that hideous scene of him
surrounded by half eaten dogs. |
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Fun: 1 |
I don't know how a flying fat baby isn't fun, but trust me,
it isn't. |
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Cuteness: 9 |
The adventures of a grinning cupid killing puppies with
hearts always kind of makes me want to snuggle. |
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Mighty Bomb Jack. In this game, you got to do your best to control
this super hero spaz while he tried to stop BELZEBUT. Big Red, said
this about BELZEBUT:
"I hope that was a bad translation and not a pun intended to
soil our virgin ears with a reference to asses."
Stopping the mad plans of this (ass referencing and/or badly
translated) villain was mostly hard because no matter how lightly
you tapped jump, Mighty would take off flying to the top of the
screen. This meant that you got to spend about 80 percent of your
playing time waiting for him to land.
Along the way you ran into dangerous enemies described in the manual
like this:
"Rube: It is very much revengeful towards Jack, and it
pursues him endlessly."
Translation: "Ha ha, American. Tecmo no hire no one for speak
English make manual of you."
You could open treasure chests in hopes of finding magical items
that would either turn all the nondescript creatures into
"Mighty Coins" or give you the miraculous ability to
change Mighty Jack's color. |
Wow. That turtle thing looks very much revengeful.
And my hero looks like he made his outfit out of his underwear. |
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Graphics: 0 |
I didn't even know if my little guy was supposed to be human
or not. |
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Fun: 1 |
The game is a boring combination of walking and jumping. And
if you get lost, this is the kind of nonsensical hint the
manual gives you:
"Playing Mighty Bomb Jack with a drawn-up map will
increase your playing pleasure. Suppose you draw one scene on
a piece of paper in the shape of a pyramid. The labyrinth to
the pyramid will appear. This map will give you some hints on
solving this mystery!" |
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Fun Rating for Instruction Manual: 10 |
I've read the manual 20 times more than I've played Mighty
Bomb Jack. It's articulate, fun, friendly, and inspirational.
"Naturally this booklet cannot give you all the
secrets to Mighty Bomb Jack, it's up to you to figure out the
missing secrets. We at Tecmo, Inc. are confident that your
skills will allow you to succeed! Good luck!" |
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M.U.S.C.L.E. I was really hoping for a terrible wrestling game
starring stupid pink toys, and finally my dreams were answered. In
this hybrid of electronics and shit, you got to choose between
several mutated things, but it didn't matter who you picked since
they all had the same moves and the graphics were so bad you
couldn't tell what they were supposed to be anyway.
The little monster things had names like Geronimo, Robin Mask, and
Wars Man and could punch or attempt to fly through the air and hit
their opponent with their little pink asses. If your opponent was
stupid enough to let you get behind them, you could unleash a
devastating suplex move that seemed to do about the same amount of
damage as a punch, it was just harder to execute.
M.U.S.C.L.E. sort pretended to be a video game, but I think it was
released by sociologists studying the effects of shitty software on
impressionable children. Their findings were insubstantial due to
the fact that only 3 people bought a copy of M.U.S.C.L.E. |
It looks like a knight and a ninja, but it could
just be a retarded kid with a teapot on his head fighting a girl
wearing pajamas and a paper plate on her face. You can't really tell
in this game. |
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Graphics: 0 |
You can't seriously expect me to try to articulate how bad
those graphics are. |
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Fun: 1 |
You can get all the excitement of this game without even
inserting the cartridge. Listen: Every now and then, a magic
ball will fly out of the crowd and into the ring. If you grab
it, your little guy starts to flash different colors. Then the
M.U.S.C.L.E. sound engineers show off what they learned in
college by simulating a crowd noise with nasty static.
However, sticking your face next to a strobe light and
switching your TV to a channel you don't get can recreate this
fabulous M.U.S.C.L.E. experience without having to play the
game. |
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Embarrasment: 8 |
After the programmers of M.U.S.C.L.E. were kicked out of
their parents' basement, they were ridiculed on the street by
groups of disgruntled NES players. That was years ago and
they've moved on to prosperous careers in the video rental
business, but that embarrasing game still gets brought up in
the VideoLand break room. The programmers usually respond by
crying, "Just cut it out, you guys!" Then they call
their therapist who tells them that they really are special. |
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Where's Waldo? As if anyone cared, the geniuses behind the Waldo
phenomenon took a stupid line of books and made a stupider game out
of them. In this game, you look for Waldo. When he is found, fans of
the game get a great feeling not only from the sense of
accomplishment, but because they found someone who is a bigger dork
than they are.
You spend most of the game waiting for Waldo to walk slowly from
location to location where you're finally treated to an exciting
Waldo finding experience. You move around a little box and push the
button when you think the idiot is in it. But since the graphics are
so bad and everyone looks the same, you might as well just spin the
controller and randomly push buttons. There is a timer to try to try
to prevent this sort of behavior, but it gives you about six hours
to find him and no one could conceivably play the game that long.
You would have to be blind and have an unplugged controller to lose.
At least that's what I thought until I beat the game blindfolded
from the kitchen by screaming at it. |
Every single one of those faceless things could be
Waldo. It's a good thing I hate this game and don't play it. |
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Graphics: 0 |
Of all the games to have crappy little stick figures for
graphics, this is the one where it should have been avoided. |
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Fun: 0 |
If one is at the intellectual level required to enjoy this
game, they are probably not capable of turning on a Nintendo. |
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Flammability: 1 |
It took at least a whole bottle of lighter fluid before I
could get this cartridge to ignite. The saddest thing is,
someone still found Waldo in the ashes. God damn Waldo. |
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Total Recall. A masterfully ruined idea for a video game from the
king of unplayable movie games, Acclaim. In this waste of
electricity, you're supposed to follow the plot of the movie, but I
don't really remember in the movie where Arnold is yanked into an
alley to do battle with midgets in pink jumpsuits. But to be honest,
all I ever remember is the alien chick with three boobs.
Your character has an incredible number of moves at his disposal:
both a jump, and a little thing he does that resembles a punch.
These will both come in handy when you're trying to stay away from
the six year olds that pop out of garbage cans to shoot at you.
Also, look out for cars that drive by and throw baseballs at you.
It's that kind of neighborhood.
I would tell you more about the game, but I quit playing it when I
heard someone coming. I didn't want anyone to know I had Total
Recall in my Nintendo. |
If I was a little bearded midget in a pink jumpsuit,
I would not go attack anyone who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger. |
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Graphics: 1 |
The graphics in this game were as ugly as those psychic
mutants from the faulty Mars domes. |
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Fun: 1 |
When you get in a fight, most of your enemies' main attacks
are hopping over your head over and over. I guess that's kind
of fun. In a circus clown kind of way. |
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Versatility: 4 |
Besides containing one of the worst games ever, the
cartridge can also be used to fix a wobbly table, to act as a
coaster, or even to bonk a participant on the head during a
puppet show. |
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On to Part Three
Back to Part One