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!

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.
Fun: 1 I don't know how a flying fat baby isn't fun, but trust me, it isn't.
Cuteness: 9 The adventures of a grinning cupid killing puppies with hearts always kind of makes me want to snuggle.


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.

Graphics: 0 I didn't even know if my little guy was supposed to be human or not.
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!"
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!"


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.

Graphics: 0 You can't seriously expect me to try to articulate how bad those graphics are.
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.
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.


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.

Graphics: 0 Of all the games to have crappy little stick figures for graphics, this is the one where it should have been avoided.
Fun: 0 If one is at the intellectual level required to enjoy this game, they are probably not capable of turning on a Nintendo.
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.


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.

Graphics: 1 The graphics in this game were as ugly as those psychic mutants from the faulty Mars domes.
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.
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.

On to Part Three

Back to Part One