famicomclub-blog

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Crystalis ゴッド・スレイヤー はるか天空のソナタ

Release: July, 1990 | Developer: SNK | Publisher: SNK

It’s funny how growing up with video games can fragment your perception of them in retrospect. I vividly remember my mom picking up a game for me on her way home from work from Acme Video on a regular basis, and hastily grabbing the most visually pleasing box from the shelf devil-may-care, as she always did.

That habit led to my introduction to Crystalis, which I remembered really liking, but when the time came for the game to return to the store it fell away to new anticipation – would the next game to come home be another Crystalis, or merely a Captain Comic?.

Looking back at the game my appreciation for Crystalis has grown exponentially. Unlike my child self, by this point I had slugged my way through a fair (and financially reasonable) chunk of the Nintendo Entertainment System library, and suffice to say I now have a fairly accurate barometer of what is good and what is not when it comes to NES games – let it be known that Crystalis is exceptional.

I absorbed more of the story this time around, playing as an unnamed hero who regains consciousness after being in a cryogenic sleep for a century.

Even though he’s lost his memory, he isn’t long discovering that he was placed in cryostasis just prior to the onset of a global thermonuclear war. Players awaken to a world in which, due to the war, all technology has been lost and life has reverted back to a medieval state. The world is overrun with monsters and mutants, and primitive magic is the only powerful weapon man possesses.

You are primarily guided in your quest by four wise men, who believe you to be the hero from the past prophesied to destroy the evil Draygonia Empire – it seems the Empire has been using its military in an attempt to seize a mysterious floating tower. According to myth, this floating tower houses an array of weapons built by the early survivors of the apocalyptic war. Those who constructed the tower and its weapon system intended it to be used to prevent a future cataclysm, but it is Emperor Draygon’s intent to use it to dominate the world.

The only way to defeat the Draygonia Empire is to obtain the Swords of Wind, Fire, Water, and Thunder and combine them to defeat the power Emperor Draygon.

Confusing at times? Yes – but what 8-bit game isn’t when it tries to shoe-horn a cohesive story in amongst blocky character sprites and color palette limitations?

As you progress through the game you acquire different magic spells while accomplishing tasks and advancing your stats in typical RPG fashion – you receive these spells and abilities from the aforementioned four wise men, as well as various other NPCs you encounter along the way.

The overarching goal is to obtain the fore-mentioned elemental swords and their additional power-ups. The power-ups, when equipped, grant you special abilities when the sword is charged. These include the ability to use the Sword of Fire to melt ice bricks and use the Sword of Water to create water bridges over streams and rivers.

Crystalis can best be described as the perfect marriage between The Legend of Zelda and Ys: The Vanished Omens. Developed and published by SNK, Crystalis combined the frenetic pacing of Ys with the free-range, top-down vastness of Zelda. Much like Zelda, you battle enemies in real-time on a world map, but you can also enter towns in which you stay at inns, interact with NPCs, and purchase items and armor. Add to that an exceptional musical score and an elemental magic system that lends itself perfectly to dungeon puzzle crawling and you have what seems to be a mash-up of classic action RPGs.

Playing the game again was like finding a priceless painting in your attic – had it been here the whole time, right under my nose?

I still hold fast that Crystalis serves as the definitive old-school action RPG. It is the game that Zelda 2: Link’s Adventure should have been. The weapons, the magic swords and magic spells – it all works so well within the context of the ultra-fast if some-what repetitive combat system. Loose controls? They just take some getting used to and you’ll have no idea what you were even thinking an hour in.

The best thing about Crystalis, which can be said for very few Nintendo games, is that the story grabs hold and drives the game forward.

I ended up caring about these characters, these blocky avatars – intrigued by the mysterious ones, infuriated at the traitors and threatened by those most sinister.

I catch myself thinking about what will happen next when I put down the controller and pull back the curtain to my real life. After all; retro or not, 8-bits or true-to-life texture models, isn’t that what video games are supposed to do? Engage you?

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Obake no Q-tarō: Wanwan Panic! オバケのQ太郎ワンワンパニック

Release: December 16, 1985 | Developer: TOSE  | Publisher: Bandai

Based on Hiroshi Fujimoto and Abiko Moto’s 1964 manga and more directly on the mid-80s Japanese television anime, Obake no Q-tarō: Wanwan Panic! is a colourful yet entirely mediocre platformer. An early effort by Japanese developer TOSE, the game follows the adventures of the mischevious ghost character Qtarō, with the central conceit of the game being  Qtarō’s fear of dogs.

As Qtarō, you traverse a total of 12 side-scrolling platforming stages with a few bonus stages sprinkled in between, avoiding dogs and facing off against several uninspired bosses. Qtarō has the ability to fly and needs to consume fruit and candy in order to maintain flight. Thankfully these power-ups are plentiful. You can essentially fly through entire levels with relative ease, which becomes almost a necessity as the game difficulty ramps up swiftly when played without flying, as a straight platformer.

Obake no Q-tarō: Wanwan Panic! did see a Western release, although it was a heavily modified one. Due to the lack of Western awareness of the Qtarō manga and anime, the game was completely reskinned and released as Chubby Cherub. Chubby Cherub strips the game if it’s unique Japanese-ness leaving only the mostly-bland and clunky gameplay, making it completely forgettable.

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Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti スプラッターハウス わんぱくグラフィティ

Release: July 31st, 1989 | Developer: Now Production | Publisher: Namcot

Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti is a true gem. The game, the third in the Splatterhouse series after the original arcade game and the subsequent PC Engine port, was released in 1989 by Namco. It is from the Japanese school of super deformed chibi-styled side games, such as Konami’s Akumajō Special: Boku Dracula-kun (Kid Dracula) and Capcom’s Mighty Final Fight.

Don’t let the cutesy graphics fool you, this game has some disturbing imagery scattered throughout, making a North American release a certain impossibility. Take for instance decapitated corpses falling from trees while hideous heads are left hanging from their nooses, devilish alien worms bursting forth from a school girl’s chest and solemn parishioners looking on as you battle a possessed goat before a satanic idol in a Catholic church.

The story starts as all Splatterhouse games do, with your untimely death and the abduction of your beloved girlfriend by some manner of ghoul or devil worshipping sodomite. You are brought back from the dead by the powers of a possessed Jason Voorhees-esque mask and you set out in search of the aforementioned hell-spawn (represented in this incarnation by a floating Jack-o-Lantern) to rescue your lady friend from its diabolical clutches.

The name of the game is platforming, in the vein of Ghouls n’ Ghosts and Adventure Island. You progress through four large and varied stages en route to the final confrontation in “Hell House on the Hill”. The jack-o-lantern has the guts (amirite?) to taunt you at the beginning of each stage, which adds some unintentionally hilarious phrases such as “BE GARBAGE OF CESSPOOL” and “DIAMOND LAKE, GHOST COMES HERE WITH A RAY”. The former being an obvious Friday the 13th Crystal Lake reference.

Speaking of horror movie references, this game is absolutely choked with them. Everything from David Cronenberg, Evil Dead, Brian Yunza’s Re-Animator. Ridley Scott’s Alien and the Exorcist get paid loving tribute throughout Wanpaku Graffiti’s sprawling world.

The game is straight up action platforming that sees you use your trusty butchers’ knife to hack through spooky graveyards, haunted houses, possessed cabins, cursed lakes and slimy sewers in search vengeance. Snuck in with the tightly controlled platforming is a rudimentary experience point system that sees you get gradual health increases the more enemies you kill. If you die once it’s game over, but this is offset by level skipping passwords and a limited number of continues.

Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti has two endings, one of which is a hidden ending you can see if you find a secret branching path. I won’t spoil the either of them, but I will say that final scene in the game is a masterpiece of meta self-referential genius.

I cannot recommend this game enough, especially if you are horror movie buff or simply love weirdo Japanese video games.

[famicomclub-blog]

Final Fantasy ファイナルファンタジー

Release: December 18, 1987 | Developer: Square A-Team | Publisher: Square

I have been playing the Final Fantasy games ever since late 1990 or early 1991. I can’t remember the exact date, but there was snow on the ground and both Mega Man 3 and Final Fantasy were brand new releases.

My affair began innocently enough; with a botched rental attempt. I had picked Mega Man 3 up off the shelf and when I got home I found, much to my horror, that the clerk had put the wrong game in the plastic case. My parents refused to take me back to Acme Video, not understanding the full impact of being robbed of a new Mega Man game. I decided to make the best of my situation and give this impostor a try. The game was Final Fantasy, and I was hooked immediately.

Around this time my cousin, Neil, who remains one of my best friends to this day, was playing the game at his babysitter’s. The game became somewhat of an obsession between us, with many sleep-overs spent plotting strategies and praying that we could avoid the Warmech in that final, long hallway before Tiamat.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the original game in Japan, so I’ve decided to go back and revisit the original game, the one that started this massive RPG beast in motion.

So let’s start where it all began: the beginning.

With one chance left to save a failing company, Hironobu Sakaguchi was tasked with creating what could’ve been Square’s last game. After sinking all it’s money into the development of what was to be an epic title for Nintendo’s Famicom Disk System, as well as many other failed (and rightly so, as they were terrible) Disk System games and Famicom titles, Square was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Pooling their resources, Square decided that they could afford to create one final, make-or-break game. Hironobu Sakaguchi went to work and decided to develop a genre game. He settled on the blossoming RPG genre, an area with which competing Japanese developer Enix was enjoying a massive amount of success through it’s young Dragon Quest franchise.

Taking many elements from American computer RPG’s such as Ultima and The Bard’s Tale, and also borrowing heavily from Enix’s Dragon Quest (who, in-turn had borrowed heavily from pen and paper RPGs), Final Fantasy was created with an emphasis on story and character development. Instead of a true role-playing experience, Final Fantasy would start you off in a predestined role, and allow you to grow and develop your party within a preset story arc. Final Fantasy ended up a more complex and detailed game than it’s contemporaries, namely Dragon Quest. You had a party of 4 playable characters to DQ’s one, you could battle up to 9 enemies per encounter to DQ’s one. The world was bigger, it contained more towns, dungeons, and non-playable characters. You also had a much larger selection of weapons, items, armor, and accessories to find and collect. Final Fantasy is a hard game, to be sure, but not nearly as hard as Dragon Quest 1, and all though both games took a significant amount of grinding to advance, Final Fantasy was much more forgiving with higher rewards for both experience points and gold and more enemy variety. These factors make grinding through Final Fantasy some-what less soul-shattering than Dragon Quest.

Another key difference between Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest was the amount of battle animation. In Dragon Quest, the depth of the sprite animation on the battle screen is a shaking effect when a critical hit has been landed. In Final Fantasy your playable characters are visible during battle and they also share the screen with multiple enemies. Final Fantasy’s playable sprites step forward and perform an action when their turn comes. These actions range from swinging a weapon to performing magic attacks. In an impressive innovation, the weapon wielded during these animations, as well as the animated magic sprite, changes depending on what weapon is equipped or what magic is being used. Your character also slumps when critically wounded, setting up a precedent of character expression that Square would eventually go on to master during the glory days of the Super Nintendo.

These small innovations, when packaged together, ended up giving birth to the console JRPG and pushing it beyond the simple beginnings seen in the first Dragon Quest games.

These gameplay touches and graphical tweaks would become one of the most beloved and defining attributes of future entries in the Final Fantasy universe, as each subsequent game in the franchise not only advanced the genre as a whole, but took bold steps in reinventing the series itself with fresh stories, new characters, constantly shifting and tweaked battle mechanics, and an ever-evolving character class configuration system.

The story of Final Fantasy is pretty average on the surface, having to do with prophecies, Light Warriors, elemental fiends, and darkened crystals. When examined in detail, the story was actually a key step in paving the way for subsequent RPGs by taking the genre out of the swords-and-castle setting of 9th century England and transporting you to strange new worlds; worlds were technology and customs from past, present, future, and fantasy join together and co-exist.

You are initially led to believe that you are playing in a long-forgotten era of ancient Earth, or medieval fantasy world. However, toward the end of the game your preconceived notions are shattered as you discover and explore an ancient satellite orbiting the world and its mysterious robotic sentries. It is further hinted that game may, in fact, take place in the future of our own reality, after society as we know it has destroyed itself.

The game may be somewhat forgotten in the eyes of current day RPG fans, and even within the series, it spawned. Other Final Fantasy games spurred more memorable innovations, characters, and stories. That being said, there is no denying the original 8-bit adventure’s place in the history and in the evolution of not only the RPG genre but also the importance the title holds as being the among the first video games too so artfully marry visual detail and narrative structure.

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Akumajou Densetsu 悪魔城伝説

Release: December 22, 1989 | Developer: Konami | Publisher: Konami

Stripping out the more bizarre and aimless RPG elements of the second Akumajou Dracula game, Konami gave the series a spectacular 8-bit swansong with the near flawless third entry in the storied series.

Released as Akumajou Densetsu in Japan, and Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse in North America and Europe, this third entry is actually a prequel to the original game and builds upon that games basic gameplay.

The third game features everything that made the original a classic and builds on that successful formula. Gone is the confusing open world layout and rudimentary RPG elements of the second game. The third entry in Konami’s storied series goes back to its linear action platforming roots with a larger and more fleshed out world, recruitable secondary characters and branching pathways.

Being the final Dracula game on the Family Computer, Konami managed to deliver an instant classic with this brilliant third entry.  Akumajou Densetsu’s impact and influence can be felt all the way through to the Japan-only PC Engine-exclusive masterpiece Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo and it’s direct sequel Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

There are several key differences which make the Japanese release of Akumajou Densetsu a more attractive choice for Castlevania fanatics. Due to Nintendo of America’s draconian manufacturing practices of the era, Konami exclusive sound chips were left out of the game’s international release. While certainly excellent and a landmark soundtrack in its own right, the Japanese release actually has a richer more atmospheric soundtrack because of this. The soundtrack for the game, in general, is so well regarded that it recently received a vinyl release via Mondo. This double-LP actually contains both the Japanese and international versions of Akumajou Densetsu’s tracks, leaving no stone unturned.

There are also scant graphical differences again thanks to Nintendo of America’s policies. Surprisingly some crosses were allowed to remain in the North American release, while many nude statues were covered. The sprite for Medusa was even altered, removing her “bare” breasts entirely.

Put all of these pieces together and you have a true classic; a game as beautiful visually as it is to listen to and one of the rare cases where a sequel no only improves upon the preceding games in every possible way but completely overshadows them.

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Maniac Mansion マニアックマンション

Release: September 13, 1988 | Developer: Jaleco  | Publisher: Jaleco

Developed specifically for the Family Computer by Jaleco, the Japanese Maniac Mansion was released a full two years before the Nintendo Entertainment System version and is actually a drastically different game.

There are a few notable differences, many of which make the Japanese game function a lot more like a prototype than the ‘finished’ version we got in North America.

In the Japanese M, for instance, for instance, there is no screen scrolling. The game takes place entirely on single screens, much like The Legend of Zelda. This makes the wider, multi-screen rooms in the original PC version (and the later NES version) needed to be condensed into single screens, muddling some puzzles. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese version also has some more risqué graphics; organs and body parts in jars, a mummy pin-up poster, and a nude statue to name a few.

While many of these variations are minor annoyances at worst, there is one missing feature that makes the game near-unplayable. In both the PC and NES versions, when you move the cursor over an object you can interact with the name of the object pops up on-screen. The Famicom version of Maniac Mansion has no such indicator, making finding interactive objects a tiresome and repetitive slog of clicking every pixel on the screen.

Fortunately, Jaleco would turn in a far superior version for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, making this bizarre Japanese only port of the game a singular curiosity.

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Dragon Ball: Shenron no Nazo ドラゴンボール 神龍の謎

Release: November 27, 1986 | Developer: Tose | Publisher: Bandai

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Punch-Out!! Special パンチアウト!!

Release: September 18, 1987 | Developer: Nintendo R&D3 | Publisher: Nintendo

Released in 1987 and given away exclusively for winners in Nintendo’s US Golf Tournament contest, this golden version of Punch-Out is an interesting game. US Golf was a Famicom Disk System game developed and published by Nintendo and in 1987 Nintendo held a large tournament competition, wherein players could have their US Golf high scores electronically transmitted to Nintendo via special kiosks at certain retailers. The top winners got a chance at a gold copy of Punch-Out!! as a prize, of which there were 10,000 carts produced. The carts were distributed to the tournament winners and also through various raffles and contests across Japan. This original console version of Punch-Out!!, also referred to as Punch-Out!! Special, was the first home port of Nintendo’s original arcade classic.

Meanwhile, in order to better market the game overseas, Mike Tyson’s name and likeness were secured for the North American release a month later. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out was released in North America October 18th, 1987 and was commercially released in Japan with Mike Tyson’s likeness on November 21st, 1987.

Punch-Out!! Special, in all of its golden glory, is somewhat a prototype of the commercially released Mike Tyson version. It’s essentially the same game, with several color differences and some alternate music when the phrase “TITLE BOUT!” flashes on the screen.

The most notable difference is the lack of a final ‘super’ opponent. Punch-Out!! Special ends after the Super Macho Man fight. Even the NES version of Punch-Out!! that was released after the Mike Tyson license expired added a sprite swap of Tyson named Mr.Dream.

Punch-Out!! Special is also the only known Famicom release that uses Nintendo Entertainment System chips on its board. Although the game looks similar to an NES cart in appearance, it is in reality much smaller in size.

An oddity, the Gold Punch Out Special cart’s low release numbers coupled with the popularity of the Punch-Out franchise as a whole means this cartridge commands a high price, and double that for a complete copy. It is among the most sought-after games in the Famicom library.

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Akira アキラ Release: December 24, 1988 | Developer: Taito | Publisher: Taito

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Akumajou Densetsu 悪魔城伝説

Release: December 22, 1989 | Developer: Konami | Publisher: Konami

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Nazo no Kabe: Block Kuzushi 謎の壁 ブロックくずし

Release: December 13, 1986 | Developer: Konami | Publisher: Konami

Essentially a Breakout clone, Nazo no Kabe largely succeeds because of not only how well it emulated its source material, but also how it strove to improve it.

Konami decidedly went with the “build a better mousetrap” approach to game development with Nazo no Kabe, but while sampling from Atari’s Breakout arcade game and downright stealing from Taito’s Arkanoid, they also managed to add several features that fit in so seamlessly that you are left wondering why Atari and Taito didn’t think of them first.

The inclusion of multiple enemies on screen and some truly fun and inventive power-ups such as slow motion balls and exploding balls make Nazo no Kabe a delightful experience. Taking a page directly from Arkanoid, the graphics are colorful and imaginative, and the action is quick, yet the slowly escalating difficulty never feels unfair or overwhelming.

The typical puzzle game grind is helped substantially by the fact that Nazo no Kabe is not an endless score-chase to a glitched kill-screen; instead, it’s a structured experience with a finite number of zones and sub-levels. Your progression through the game is given all the more weight by virtue of the fact that there are even boss battles at the end of some stages.

Nazo no Kabe is one of the best puzzle games not only on the Disk System, but rates right up there with Dr. Mario, Tetris, and Snake, Rattle and Roll for best puzzle game of the 8-bit era. It truly is a shame that Konami skipped a North American localization and instead released the game under the name of Crackout on for the NES in Europe and Australia only.

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Gremlins 2 グレムリン2

Release: December 14, 1990 | Developer: Sunsoft | Publisher: Sunsoft

When discussing the topic of quality Famicom third-party developers, you often hear the same names repeated ad nauseum; companies such as Capcom and Konami are perennial favorites, and for good reason; they created some of the most iconic and influential games in history. Other companies such as Hudson Soft, Tecmo, and Irem may also enter the conversation for the same reasons. There is, however, one developer that you don’t hear about as often as you probably should:  Sunsoft.

Although Sunsoft had been in the video game industry since the seventies, they rose to prominence in the late 1980’s and early 90’s developing a string of brilliant and successful titles, both original properties and license-based, before imploding during their transition to the 16-bit consoles.

Gremlins 2, along with Sunsoft’s own Batman, is among the premiere movie-based video games of the 8-bit era. Remaining remarkably true to the film’s story, Sunsoft still managed to distil the look and feel of Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch movie into a challenging (yet rarely unfair) isometric platformer.

You play as Gizmo and are tasked with navigating your way through the Clamp Building, a high-tech skyscraper besieged by the title gremlins. Along the way, Gizmo is armed with a variety of size-appropriate weaponry such as flaming matches and paperclip crossbows, which serve to increase both your attack power and attack range.

Defeated enemies drop crystal balls which can be exchanged for items such as extra lives in the stores scattered throughout the games 5 stages.

As good as Gremlins 2 is, the gameplay and graphics pale in comparison to the phenomenal soundtrack that was almost a prerequisite for Sunsoft games of the era. Journey to Silius, Batman, and Blaster Master (to name a few) were all defined by their soundtracks, and Gremlins 2 is no exception.

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The Legend of Zelda ゼルダの伝説

Release: February 21, 1986 | Developer: Nintendo R&D4 | Publisher: Nintendo

The first original title released for a new add-on, The Legend of Zelda is truly a game that could have only existed on the Disk System; a proof of concept that utilized all of the features that made the Disk Card advantageous over the original Famicom cartridge. A game save feature, a first for home consoles, was implemented and serves to provide the player with a greater sense of immersion. You weren’t just entering a password and picking up where you left off; you were continuing your adventure! You were Link!

The sheer size of Zelda necessitated the use of both sides of the Disk Card, taking full advantage of the expanded program and sprite memory. At the time of its release, the average cart topped off at around 32KB, but Zelda used both sides of the Disk Cards mammoth 112KB storage. The Legend of Zelda was a game that certainly could not have fit on any cartridge.

The Legend of Zelda was also the first Disk System game to utilize the extra sound channel made possible via the onboard synthesizer within the RAM adaptor. Strange and beautiful, the haunting music of the title screen successfully set the tone for the adventure to follow; something no one had ever experienced before.

With the Legend of Zelda came a sense of freedom and wonder. Zelda heralded a groundbreaking design philosophy, whereby the player was given full access to the entire world at the beginning of the quest. Few games in Zelda’s wake attempted such a feat, and the concept was even banished from nearly every subsequent game in the Zelda series.

Even by 1987, it had become apparent to Nintendo that the Famicom Disk System was not going to be exported to the rest of the world, but regions outside of Japan would not be deprived of The Legend of Zelda for long. While other Disk System created games, like Metroid and Kid Icarus were stuck with a clumsy password system, The Legend of Zelda was lovingly given the first on-cart battery back-up to retain the save feature from the disk. Miyamoto’s original vision of immersion would remain intact in for North America, and create a juggernaut that is still revered even today.

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Contra コントラ 魂斗羅

Release: February 9, 1988 | Developer: Konami | Publisher: Konami

Outside of Japan Nintendo had strict licensing agreements in place for third-party developers which, among other stipulations, gave Nintendo complete control over the manufacturing process. This meant that publishers would order their cartridges directly from Nintendo. This gave Nintendo strict control over the type and number of units released for their Nintendo Entertainment System console. In reality, this somewhat draconian process had a negligible effect on software quality but did (coupled with their 10NES lock-out chip) reduce piracy. It also created long-lead times for manufacturing and the expensive minimum orders kept some publishers away from the console altogether.

In Japan, publishers manufactured their own cartridges which is why there is no standardized case design for Famicom games. Famicom carts can vary in size, shape, and color in as many variations as there were publishers for the consoles 1100+ game library.

Japan’s freedom to self-manufacture not only lead to esthetic variations but also allowed developers to design and implement new onboard chips that could be used to enhance music and/0r graphics. Many games released by Konami (most notably Akumajou Densetsu and Contra) had these special add-on chips which allowed for a wide array of audio and visual perks. Most of these additions were lost when the games were ported over to North American.

Contra, a true action classic of the 8-bit era, is unsurprisingly much better in its native Japan. While the soundtrack is the same, save for some musical variation late in the game, it is the graphics that get stripped down in the more familiar North American release.

The Famicom version of Contra has several weather effects not present in international releases, such as swaying palm trees in stage 3 and blowing snow in stage 5. in the final level, the organic components of the aline lair pulsate and squirm. This animation speeds up the further you fight through the level and the more damage you inflict on the final boss. There are also cut scenes in between each stage and a Castlevania-esque map screen that shows your progress through the game world after each cutscene.

The infamous Konami code still works in this version granting you the standard 30 lives, but Contra has a few other hidden secrets exclusive to the Famicom version, such as a sound test, stage select, and a secret ending message.

For all of the reasons thus stated, the Famicom Contra cartridge can be rather pricey when compared to the standard NES release but is nonetheless a must-own for fans of the original 8-bit run-and-gun masterpiece.