When you have over a thousand video games it's stupid to not play them. My girlfriend would argue that having over a thousand video games to begin with is stupid and she's probably right. Nevertheless, I recently went on an old school NES Capcom binge and proceeded to knock Mickey Mousecapade and Strider off the bucket list.
Mickey Mousecapade
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While popular cartoons seem like no-brainer candidates for popular video game characters, in 1987 Mickey Mouse was among the first successful attempts to put a drawn actor into the budding video game medium. Capcom later went on to release several games based on popular Disney characters and Mickey Mousecapade was their first crack at it.
The plot of the game is cryptic and non-essential. If you're curious, Mickey and Minnie are looking for their friend Alice from Alice in Wonderland. There's no mention of who took her, where she is, or why she's gone. Actually, you don't even know who you're looking for until you find her as the instruction manual merely states that Mickey and Minnie are looking for their "friend".
The game play is typical for NES platformers with the caveat that Minnie must always follow Mickey. You can't leave the screen unless she's right behind you which can sometimes become irritating. Fortunately, she can't take any damage and if you find her own weapon, she can help dish out damage to opposing threats.
The game consists of five distinct levels which take place: in a fun house, at the ocean, in a forest, on a ship, and in a castle. Each level varies in difficulty and each is protected by a boss. The game is routinely simple until the boss battles which require a bit of trial and error to figure out.
The boss of the first level is simple. Just throw stars and dodge attacks until the evil witch is dead.
In the second level, located at the ocean, you'll take on Tick-Tock the Crocodile from Peter Pan. He's ruthless but if you stay in the far left of the screen and shoot whenever possible while jumping over his attacks you can beat him. I found it difficult to defeat him without taking any damage but it can be done.
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In the forest level you must navigate through the tricky labyrinth to get to the final boss which is the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. He shoots bubble like objects at you while he too starts to make his way toward you. If he touches you, you die immediately. But you should be able to jump and dodge attacks while throwing stars at his face to beat him.
The fourth level is the ship and has a great spike in boss difficulty. The level itself is short but Pirate Pete is ruthless with those daggers. I got frustrated with dying here so I cheesed him a little bit. Since Minnie follows you and can't take damage, I tricked her to go up the ladder by going up myself and then getting as close to the edge as possible and falling off the ladder. If you do it right, she'll remain on the ladder and if you press "up" on the D-pad like you're going up the ladder (while you're beside it), she will go up by herself. Now she's face to face with Pete and you're safe on the level beneath. Throw your stars off the ship while Minnie throws them in Pete's stupid face.
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The last level is at the Castle. This level is longer and more difficult than the rest by far and you'll have to fight another Pirate Pete as a mini-boss. To beat that Pete, I continually went to the room below him and destroyed the candles until I got the invincibility power-up. Then I rushed up to him and touched him to death! This power-up acts like the star on Super Mario Bros. so Pete didn't stand a chance. After that you'll be ready to take on Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty and she's extremely hard. I cheesed her too. In the room before Maleficent there's some hidden power-ups in the wall if you hit them just right. Sometimes you can score the invincibility power-up again which makes her easy prey.
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| disney.wikia.com |
This game took a few hours to practice and only about two hours to beat. If you ever want to knock off some of the NES games in your collection and have this one laying around, it's a good start!
Strider
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Strider is a side-scrolling action game developed and published by Capcom in 1989. Originally an arcade release, the game was eventually adapted to consoles. The game is set in the dystopian future of 2048 where a mysterious dictator rules over the world. You're Hiryu and you're tasked with assassinating the dictator.
The game is chocked full of terrible translations so many of the sentences in the game and manual hardly make sense. But that's all part of the charm!
The game consists of multiple locations that you must visit and revisit based on what keys you collect. Doors in the game are marked by numbers 1 through 5 and only the corresponding key will let you in those doors. Each city has it's own key, power-ups, and mini-bosses hidden within. There are also clues about which city you should visit next so there is a puzzle overlaid to the plot but it's not terribly hard to figure out.
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The game is relatively simple up until the final stage called Red Dragon. Once you access Red Dragon you can no longer visit any other city so you better hope you have all the power-ups, especially the Plasma Arrow. The Plasma Arrow is necessary for defeating the final boss and if you don't have it, you're as good as screwed.
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| shamoozal.com |
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