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James Wuffy’s Retro Adventure - Entry #0

Hey everyone!

I know not many peeps still use Tumblr, but I figured this was a good place to get started. I will explain the title soon enough, but here’s the reason why I’m making this series:

I like retro games. A lot. I like that a game can be good or fun (and preferably both!) regardless of:

how old it is;

how well-known it is;

hardware limitations of the time;

nostalgic value.

However, despite my fascination with old games, I have not actually beaten many of the classics. While I have played a few, I did so on console emulators, using save states.

For the uninitiated, save states are artificial save points that a player can create at any time when playing on an emulator. If they screw up, they can restore that save point, as if nothing bad happened.

This means I did not experience those games the way they were meant to be played. As such, I aim to fix this, and beat some of these classics properly:

if a game doesn’t have a save/password feature, I will beat it in one go;

if a game doesn’t store the number of lives/weapons/etc. I had upon saving or using a password, I will grind for them once more (foreshadowing~~~);

if I have to keep retrying over and over to get better at the game, so be it.

I intend on recreating the experience of playing on console, for better or for worse. Hence the name of the series, James Wuffy’s Retro Adventure. And I’m gonna be documenting my progress here, on this blog.

Being an introductory post (which is why it is entry #0), I wanted to briefly shame part of my gaming backstory, focusing on 4 games from my childhood.

So here we go!

A little backstory...

I was around 4 or 5 years old when I had my first gaming experience (I was born in 1990, for reference).

One of my grandparents’ neighbors had an NES, and she let me play on it.

The NES, or Nintendo Entertainment System, is an 8-bit console released in Europe in 1986. It was originally released in Japan in 1983, and there it was known as Famicom, or Nintendo Family Computer.

She had the 2-in-1 Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt cartridge and The Legend of Zelda. I can’t recall if she had any other games.

Funnily enough, another neighbor of my grandparents was my cousin, who had a bootleg NES console, with those multi-game cartridges. We were able to play dozens of games on it, it was a lot of fun.

Eventually, my parents bought me and my brother an NES. I was around 6 years old by then. The NES was pretty old at this point, and it came bundled with two games: The Hunt for Red October and Solomon’s Key. 

For a while, these were the only two games I could get my hands on. I eventually moved to another house, and one of our neighbors had an NES too. He had two games that I had not yet played: Super Mario Bros 2 and Nintendo World Cup. He let me borrow those, and I had a lot of fun with them.

But let’s get into a bit more detail, shall we?

The Hunt for Red October

The Hunt for Red October was tough. Its music isn’t catchy or upbeat, it’s downright eerie - fitting for the story’s atmosphere, but unpleasant to listen to for longs periods. It also has some pretty nifty cutscenes for NES standards.

The original book was published in 1984, and a movie based on it was released in 1990. The game came out in 1991, making it a “movie tie-in game”, which were notorious for being quickly-developed cash-grabs, riding on the popularity of the movie and having varying levels of quality. They did put some effort into it though, unlike most movie tie-in games of this era.

In this game, you control a submarine, and you can:

shoot forward with the A button;

shoot limited homing missiles with the B button;

collect items to replenish missiles and repair the sub, among other things;

camouflage yourself temporarily from enemy subs with the Select button;

fight a boss at the end of each stage.

You also take damage from touching walls and other obstacles, so you have to tread carefully.

The final level has a drastic change in gameplay style. It’s a platforming level where you control who I presume is the captain and have to kill enemies and disarm bombs that have been planted on the submarine. And this level drags on.

One time, my brother and I accidentally put in a “99 lives” code. We were never able to replicate, and upon looking it up online, I’ve no clue how we managed to even do it in the first place since it’s quite long.

We beat level after level, but you always start the final level with 5 lives, regardless of how many lives you had before. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to beat the game.  

But oh well, on to the next one!

Solomon’s Key

Then, there was Solomon’s Key. This is one of those games where each level is equivalent to “one TV screen”. A lot of NES games were like that, at the beginning of the console’s lifespan.

You control Dana, a wizard that can create and destroy golden blocks with the A button (or bonk them with his head twice to destroy them) and throw fireballs with the B button when you have them in-store.

In terms of stages, you have:

48 regular stages: 4 stages per Zodiac constellation;

12 bonus stages - Hidden Room: these are unlocked by collecting a constellation item in each 4th level of a constellation;

3 secret stages - Room of Time, Room of Space, Princess Room: these are unlocked by collecting seals along the way. Doing so will replace 2 of the bonus stages with the Room of Time and the Room of Space;

1 final stage - Solomon’s Key

If you play the game casually, at most, you will complete all the regular stages, maybe a few bonus ones, and the final stage. This will grant you one of the game’s endings, but not the best one. You have to collect all the seals to be able to unlock and complete the secret stages. This is mandatory if you want the best ending. 

However, these seals are hidden. When an item is hidden in a tile, you have to create and destroy a golden block on top of that tile, and then the item becomes visible. BUT, since there are no hints whatsoever as to which stages have seals, and in which tiles they are hidden, you’d have to create blocks in every single tile of every single stage to find them all on your own.

Do a little research instead: look up a walkthrough or use the video above, it’s the sensible thing to do.

The game is quite long and has no password system. There is a continue code, that allows you to continue up until stage 41. I don’t think my brother and I knew about this code at the time, so this is another game we didn’t beat. It’s still a pretty cool game though. 

Nintendo World Cup

Now, I don’t really like football. However, this game is seriously a lot of fun. Here are a few reasons why:

there are no yellow nor red cards, so you can tackle and slide into players as much as you want. In earlier matches, you can actually put the other players out of commission by tackling them over and over, and they just lie there on the field, KO’ed. Unfortunately, you cannot tackle players from stronger teams, so you’re stuck using the slide to steal the ball from them;

you can do super-powered kicks/headbutts, called Super Shots, which are harder for the goalkeepers to defend than regular shots. Any players hit by a Super Shot go flying around, which was always super fun to watch as a kid;

2 player matches, with exclusive football fields to pick from. You can go with the default grass field, a field with rocks that players trip on, an ice field where players that get tackled/slid into slide all over the place... it’s a lot of fun;

a password system, so you can resume your progress after turning the console off without a problem. And you could alter a couple of digits in the password to play with a different team as well.

I actually did beat this game as a kid. So many fond memories :3 

Super Mario Bros 2

Super Mario Bros 2 is by far the most well-known game in this list. It’s also infamous for being a reskin of a game never released outside of Japan called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. Supposedly, the original SMB 2 was deemed too difficult for Western audiences at the time, and Nintendo was afraid that it wouldn’t sell well overseas, especially after the first game in the series was such a big hit. So, they took Doki Doki Panic, which was an easier game, tinkered with its looks and released it as the official SMB 2 in America and Europe.

In this game, you can play as Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool, as she was known at the time. Each has their own stats in terms of jumping capability and strength, this last one determining how fast a character can pick up enemies, objects, and vegetables. Every time you start a new stage, you get to pick which character to use:

Mario is the well-rounded character, with average jumping skill and strength;

Luigi jumps the highest and has a very floaty jump, staying in the air longer. This also means that he’s a little harder to do precise jumps with;

Toad jumps the lowest but is the strongest character, picking up things really fast and being the fastest when holding something; 

Toadstool is the weakest character, but possesses the best aerial movement, since she can glide for a couple of seconds, allowing for long jumps and more precise landings. She’s the most beginner-friendly character, and thus, my main character of choice as a kid.

Every character can also duck for a few seconds until they start flashing. This allows them to do a high jump and reach high platforms. Without this jump, some characters wouldn’t be able to complete certain levels. At the time, I didn’t know this ability existed, and so I thought certain levels were only beatable if you picked Luigi.

There are also hidden warps in the game, that let you skip several stages ahead. I actually managed to discover these warps on my own, and I was pretty proud of myself :p. It was one of the first games I beat on the NES, if not the first one.

Last words

And with all that said, I think it’s about time I wrap things up here. I know it was a lot to get through, but hopefully, you enjoyed my ramblings :3. And maybe you’ll be interested in checking some of these games out yourself. 

My next entry will be the proper beginning of the adventure. 

Until next time! 

#James Wuffy Retro Adventure #Retro Adventure #Gaming #Retro #The Hunt for Red October #Solomon's Key #Super Mario Bros 2 #Nintendo World Cup #NES