Brad Hates Games

Much like a house that has been ravaged by a terrible fire, or a car that’s been left parked on the street overnight in Lackawanna, Fatal Labyrinth is an RPG that’s been stripped all the way down to its frame. There’s barely any story, one town, no stores, and only one playable character. The game also eschews the tedious turn-based menu-driven battles of most RPGs – which would normally be a good thing – and actually manages to come up with “combat” that’s even less interesting than picking “fight” off of a list.

You begin the game in the only town, and learn that some magic goblet has been stolen, causing darkness to fall over the land, and an evil dragon to come back into power. At first, I wasn’t too concerned – sure, lots of people were whining that it meant the end of the world, but there’s people like that in every one of these games. I mean, if Madden was an RPG, there would be some guy who’d tell you that if the Eagles don’t win on Sunday, evil would spread across the land. So I was pretty unmoved by people’s pleas for help until I saw this:

That really drove the whole thing home for me. A world plunged into perpetual darkness and about to be destroyed by an evil dragon sounds pretty bad, but it’s also really hard to relate to. It’s never happened to anyone in real life, and in video games, a crisis like that is averted on a pretty routine basis. But wet laundry? That’s something else entirely. Have you ever taken a shirt out of the dryer a little too soon, and put it on the next day, and it was still damp? It’s horrible. You walk around all day with a shirt that’s all squishy and wrinkled and feels vaguely cold. It’s probably what being attacked by one of those slimes you always see in RPGs feels like. I wasn’t about to abandon an entire town to such a miserable existence, even if it would have been a fairly brief one before they were, you know, wiped out by that dragon.

At first, I kind of dug Fatal Labyrinth’s simplified approach. The design reminded me a lot of Gateway to Apshaii, which had been one of my favorite Atari games when I was a kid. However, Fatal Labyrinth is actually a bit too simplified. Say what you want about the combat in games like Phantasy Star (and believe me, I’ve said plenty), at least it’s slightly interactive – I mean, you still have to pick “fight” off of the menu, and you even have some other options, even though you’ll rarely use them. In Fatal Labyrinth, “fight” is the only option, and you simply hold the button down in the direction of the monster you’re facing and watch them stab each other until one dies or you run away. Some might generously call it an Action/RPG, but that would be insane. This is more like an Inaction/RPG.

It wasn’t very long before the game started to get boring. Picking up equipment is almost pointless – there are only a few different pieces and plenty of duplicates, which you can’t sell or do anything useful with other than chuck at an enemy for minimal damage. There’s nobody to talk to, no side quests or sub-missions, and you can’t even leave the labyrinth once you enter it. You just explore, fight the same monsters over and over (there’s a new one every few levels), and pick up worthless items that you usually already have. The entire thing is just one long grind from start to finish. It’s straightforward and super-efficient to a fault.

Fatal Labyrinth might be ok as a cell phone game, where its streamlined, linear design would probably make it easy to play. But compared to most of the Genesis’ library, or even some Atari games from the early 1980s, it comes up severely lacking.

Race Drivin’ is a unique game in a lot of ways. Oh sure, it’s the sequel to Hard Drivin’, and uses so much recycled content from its predecessor that it’s hard to tell the two apart, but compared to other Genesis games, there’s a lot of originality. For one thing, it’s one of very few games to attempt 3D graphics on the Genesis. That’s actually not as good of an idea as it may sound. Think about it – Starfox proved that the Super Nintendo couldn’t handle 3D graphics without making everything look like ass. You can’t really expect a Genesis, the Super Nintendo’s retarded half-brother, to do a better job, can you?

It’s also one of very, very few games to simulate driving a car with no brakes, and almost certainly the only one to simulate doing so while high on hallucinogenic drugs.

It’s kind of unusual to see 3D graphics this bad outside of a Dire Straits video.

Or at least I think it’s supposed to be simulating a drug-induced trip, since taking a spin down any of the tracks in Race Drivin’ is a journey into madness. At times, the road rises to incredible heights and floats in midair with nothing underneath to support it. Severely banked turns rise out of the ground like roller coaster tracks while moving vans perform soaring jumps over wide gaps in the background. While much of this insanity can be explained by the game’s limited 3D graphics engine, some of it was clearly a conscious decision. A road that just kind of hovers in the air might be the result of the Genesis not being powerful enough to draw the ground underneath it, but once somebody decides that the airborne highway needs a barn and some trees floating in midair next to it for scenery; you’ve crossed the line into willful insanity.

By the way, do you know what would come in handy when you’re driving a car down a road that’s floating in midair and has no guardrails? Brakes. They allow you to slow down the car, or better yet, just stop it entirely and just wait for the LSD to wear off. According to the game’s instructions, the B button is for brakes, but pushing it only resulted in an annoying noise that I guess was supposed to be tires screeching, with no noticeable effect on the speed of the car. I’m inclined to say these controls were unrealistic, but who knows? Maybe the physics are different on a road that’s tilted sideways at a crazy angle while floating in mid-air.

Brad: Every few years, people take up some kind of environmental cause. These days, it’s global warming. You notice people don’t really talk about the rainforests anymore, unless its in the context of reducing global warming. Nobody cares about saving the whales (still endangered, by the way), or cheetahs (practically extinct), or rhinos (also not doing so well). In fact the only endangered animal you ever hear people pitching for these days are polar bears, which conveniently (though they might disagree) are having their habitat destroyed by… you guessed it – global warming. Deforestation, polluted lakes, extinctions, and overflowing landfills were all old environmental causes that the majority of people have largely stopped paying attention to these days, regardless of whether or not they ever got fixed. And we’ll all do the same with global warming in a few years. Just you wait.

These jellyfish hate Ecco.  Soon you will, too.

Back in the early 90s, our attention was focused on our overfished, polluted oceans. In the long-term, this didn’t help much – our oceans are probably as barren today as they ever have been in human history. On the other hand, this was an absolute boon for Sega who, showing an extremely rare occurrence of foresight, released Ecco the Dolphin, a game where you play as a dolphin and save Earth’s oceans from being swept devoid of life. Sega was wise to capitalize on the zeitgeist of the time, as players were so eager to take up the environmental cause du jour that they instantly declared Ecco a classic, regardless of whether or not it had any of the characteristics we might broadly define as being “fun” or “remotely enjoyable”.

Which, by the way, it doesn’t. The gameplay in Ecco primarily revolves around puzzle solving, and in the respect, the developers didn’t exactly go all out. In most stages, pathways will be blocked by giant blue crystals, called glyphs. The only way to get past a glyph is to find a different glyph and ram it, which somehow gives you the power to kill the original glyph. This is exactly the same kind of “puzzle solving” that you might find in a game like Doom, where you have to track down various keycards to open doors. Yet nobody ever talks about Doom like its some kind of triumph of brilliant puzzle-solving gameplay. What the hell do blue crystals have to do with anything? Or was that just the first thing the developers thought of? The whole thing reeks of unnecessary backtracking to stretch out the levels, and I seriously wonder if any less thought could have possibly been put into this.

Blue crystals?  That’s the best thing they could come up with?

The rest of the game consists of swimming around, trying to figure out what the hell you’re supposed to be doing, and getting attacked by other marine life. Apparently everything in the ocean hates Ecco – in fact, no dolphin has ever been this universally despised since Bryan Cox retired from the NFL. Enemies come at you from all sides, completely immune to the various currents that are pushing you around or – oh, I don’t know – THE WALLS OF THE STAGE, which they swim through at will. Your only weapon against this assault for the majority of the game is a dash maneuver that lets you ram your enemies. In this way, most victories are pyrrhic – you might kill your opponent, but will probably crash into some other source of damage in the process. Later in the game, you get a ranged weapon, but it’s not much more effective.

A lot of Ecco fans like to point out that the game is hard, as if that somehow automatically makes it good. Difficulty is more like a multiplier – if a game is really fun, a challenging difficulty can make it more enjoyable. But if a game isn’t that enjoyable to begin with, cranking up the difficulty just makes it even more frustrating. So Ecco isn’t good because it’s hard, and if anything, it’s hard because its not designed very well.

Stryker: Usually, when we eliminate a game that’s generally well-thought of, I don’t hate it so much as I am bored by it. You play it for a little while, thinking it must eventually get better, and then if it doesn’t, you cross it off the list and wonder what people liked so much about it in the first place. For a recent example, check out Earthworm Jim or Vectorman. So make no mistake when I tell you that this was not the case with Ecco the Dolphin. I hated this game when it first came out, I hate it still, and I hate all you people who keep insisting that it’s great. There’s nothing inherently brilliant about making a game where you play as a dolphin, and the entire game does little more than try to coast by on this thin premise.

Hey look, it’s one of the few obstacles that’s not a blue crystal!

Mr. Do!: As a wise man once said, “If dolphins are so smart, why have I eaten so many of them?”

Ah, steampunk. Literary types love this Victorian-inspired setting because it calls to mind an alternate reality lacking electricity, computers or mass production. You love this setting because it reminds you of Final Fantasy III. Nevertheless, the world of simpler machines, steam engines, and craftsmanship is an interesting one to imagine (though most people sort of overlook the increased air pollution and much more rigid class structure that would probably result from it).

Aside from being huge targets, hard to maneuver, and flammable, Zeppelins are perfect for aerial combat.

And an interesting setting can sometimes carry an otherwise average game. But here’s the problem – setting and story are intertwined. If there’s not much story, you don’t pay much attention to the setting. So while a steampunk theme might do a lot to make a mediocre RPG at least somewhat interesting, it adds almost nothing to a shooter like Steel Empire. I really don’t care if I’m shooting down zeppelins, spaceships, or hummingbirds, I just want to see them explode.

And aside from a unique setting, Steel Empire doesn’t really bring anything original to the genre. It’s decent, but definitely not Top 100 worthy.

It’s good to be back!  Well, at least it was until I started playing these ten mistakes…

Test Drive 2: The Duel – Nothing can convey the feeling of speed and power you get from driving a exotic sports car quite like hearing the roar of your engine. Unless, of course, that roar sounds more like the mighty buzz of 10,000 dying bees.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Perhaps the best way to capture the intellectual feel of the show in the game isn’t to have the first few levels play like Prince of Persia.

Tecmo World Cup ’92 – Coming soon from Tecmo, Olympic Summer Games ’94!

General Chaos – Hello General, may we introduce you to Major Disappointment, Private Shame, and Colonel Not-Nearly-As-Much-Fun-As-I-Remembered?

Zool – There is no good stuff, only Zool!

Raiden Trad – If I were to ask someone what the one thing about their game that made it different from the 1,000 other shooters available on the Genesis was, their answer had better not be “cows”.

Task Force Harrier EX – Come to think of it, the answer probably shouldn’t be “anime cutscenes and terrible sound clips,” either.

AAAHH!!! Real Monsters – Really? Nickelodeon licensed this, and yet my dreams of a Hey, Dude! game go unfulfilled?

Flink – Making a Mario-style game with a 10 year old boy as a protagonist doesn’t do anything to revolutionize the genre, but does do quite a bit toward making me feel vaguely creepy.

Sagaia – A rather convincing argument for why the shooter genre is all but dead these days.

Captain’s Log.

We were on patrol near the Federation/Romulan neutral zone when we received a distress signal from a nearby planet. I had Lt. Data call up the signal immediately, but due to a user error, the message was accidentally closed before we had a chance to scroll down and read any of it. We were unable to access it a second time, and for some reason, our computers had saved no record of it. This strikes me as patently ridiculous. My cell phone is still storing text messages Cmdr Riker sent me inviting me to his swingers party last summer, yet our high-tech starship somehow can’t keep a record of a distress call? I made this observation on the bridge, and ordered the crew to look into having all communications with the ship forwarded to my cell phone as text messages, in order that we may have at least some record of them.

Android or not, Data looks extremely uncomfortable in his chair

I wanted to beam down immediately, but Lt. Cmdr. Data informed me that the planet we were orbiting was not actually the planet from which the distress call came from, nor was it safe for a landing party. I then brought the crew into the Ready Room, and ordered them to take us to the planet in question. They responded by looking at me blankly until the woman with the cleavage finally explained to me that nobody actually knows how to fly the damn ship, and that I’m basically going to have to do everything by myself. This would be less of a problem if not for the fact that I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.

I spent the next 15 minutes stumbling around the bridge attempting to figure out how the hell to plot a course to the planet we needed to get to. I think I managed to hide my confusion by pretending to take an inordinate interest in the engineering screens, and then accessing the computer to read up on the Romulans, and try to figure out why they hate us so much. I was finally able to locate the Conn (which was hidden beneath the communications screen – who builds a ship like that?), and set a course for the planet we needed to reach, traveling at a speed of Warp 6.2.

Get ready to spend a lot of time standing around watching this.

We then spent an inordinate about of time standing around on the bridge, watching little rainbow colored specks go by on the monitor, waiting to arrive at the planet. It sort of reminded me of the long cars rides my parents would take me on when we would drive cross-country for vacation. I tried to convince the crew that, as captain, I had better things to do that stand around and watch stuff go past the window, and to just call me when we got there; but they kept insisting that it was my duty to stand by idly while they drove us there. Honestly, I don’t think they appreciate the full extent of all the non-military functions I have aboard this ship. There’s a lot more to running a starship than just warping and phasers, and if I don’t get the payroll entered on time week, their checks are going to be late again. Then they’ll get real bitchy.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived at the planet. I put together a landing team of Lt. Worf, Lt. Cmdr Data, and two redshirts to land on the planet. Immediately upon beaming down, they were attacked by Romulans. Lt. Worf became confused and attempted to attack them with his communicator, while the other members of the party stood around and got shot. Eventually, Worf got out his phaser. Not wanting to escalate the conflict I ordered Worf to set it to “Make them sit down”, the same setting as the Romulans appeared to be using. After a brief battle and a LOT of sitting, the Romulans were subdued. We were then able to make contact with the person who has sent out the signal.

Hey, get off your ass and do some work!  Damn Romulans.

Subject thanked us for the assistance, but refused an offer to be taken off the planet, instead hinting at some important knowledge contained on the site, and making vague references to other activity in the area that we should be investigating. Well, whatever lady, I’ve got some budget reports that need to get done – I don’t have time to be cavorting around space on your whims. I was also supposed to have a meeting with Worf this afternoon regarding some different suppliers for our warp fuel, but I have a feeling that he’ll want to postpone it after all the sitting he ended up doing in the battle.

End Captain’s Log Entry.

As someone who grew up on Jumpman and the Apshai games, this one hurts. It’s not just the disappointment of seeing Epyx, one of my favorite game companies, put out a bad game – if that were the case, I’d have been more upset over California Games, which they were also responsible for. The thing that makes Slime World painful is that it’s so hopelessly outdated – just playing it makes you agonizingly aware that the company was inescapably stuck in the 80s and headed down the road to extinction. Slime World’s concept is painfully simplistic, the graphics aren’t bad so much as they are just bland, and the controls are clunky. Not only that, but playing Slime World serves as a painful reality check that all those old Atari, Amiga and Commodore 64 games that we like to get nostalgic for probably weren’t all that great in the first place.

It’s like an Atari XE game from 1986 that fell into a time warp and instead ended up on the Genesis six years later.

Thanks, Epyx, but the next time I’m feeling nostalgic for the mid-80s, I’ll just watch Red Dawn again.

The Genesis was home to some all-time classics, but for every Sonic the Hedgehog or Gunstar Hereos, there were at least another four or five really terrible games, several of which were horrendous rip-offs of Mortal Kombat or based on Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. Most of these games were fairly obscure and only a few Genesis owners ever heard of them, let alone played them. But thanks to aggressive marketing, large publishers, popular licenses, or maybe because Sega forced you to buy it when you got a Genesis, these ten games managed to become fairly well-known despite being completely horrendous. For each game on this list, I’ll break down what makes it it so bad, try to explain how it became well-known anyway, and why it ranked where it did on the list.

#10. Altered Beast

At first glance, Altered Beast isn’t really that bad. It’s a decent, if unoriginal beat-em up in which you play as an ancient soldier, whom Zeus raises from the dead to rescue his kidnapped daughter, Athena. You travel from right to left across five stages punching and kicking an endless horde of identical monsters. The longer you play it, though, it stops feeling mildly generic and seems more like its ripping off one game in particlar. At first, this is hard to pinpoint. “When have I played this before?” you think. Was it Golden Axe? No, that game allowed limited movement along a 3rd dimension, and had enemies that could take a few hits. Altered Beast is strictly two dimensional, and almost all the enemies die after being hit once. Was it Ninja Gaiden? Nope, Ninja Gaiden had some platforming, whereas AB’s jumping is limited to the occasional area where you can hop up to a second plane. And then it hits you…

Altered Beast is exactly like Bad Dudes.

At the time Altered Beast was released, few other games allowed you to breakdance.

Well ok, it’s not EXACTLY like Bad Dudes. In Altered Beast’s favor, you get to turn into a Werewolf (or dragon, or bear, or other animal depending on the level), which is kind of cool. On the other hand, Bad Dudes has one of the greatest storylines in video games – President Ronnie has been kidnapped by the ninjas. If you were only going to steal one thing from Bad Dudes, it should have been that.

And it’s not as if they replaced it with a storyline that was equally good (as if such a thing were even possible). Why would Zeus need your help rescuing Athena? Did he run out of lightning bolts or something? Why wouldn’t he have gotten Herculeus, Perseus, or Jason to do it? Zeus didn’t even like Athena – he saw her as a threat to his power. And here’s one other serious flaw with the storyline – Athena isn’t the princess from Mario – she’s the Goddess of Wisdom AND War. Good luck with that – it’s going to take a lot more than some candy and an unmarked cargo van to pull off that abduction.

Silly storyline aside, Altered Beast is an average, if derivative, beat-em up. That’s not really so bad, but what earns Altered Beast a spot on this list is that it was the original pack-in game to come with the Genesis. That means that for the first year or so, every single person who bought a Genesis was essentially forced to buy a copy of Altered Beast as well. They might as well have packaged them with an apology letter while they were at it.

Graphics: Altered Beast is one of the best looking games to come out in the Genesis’ first year. In terms of winning contests with impossibly low standards, that’s kind of like having fewer “Calvin pissing” stickers on your car than anyone else in Ohio.

Sound: It’s kind of hard to take a game seriously when the very first thing you hear is Zeus commanding you to “wise fwom your gwave!”

Control: Each level allows you to turn into a different monster, each with its own special attacks. These attacks generally fall into two categories – “projectile” and “run right into enemy and take damage”.

In a more perfect world, suggesting this… whatever the hell it is… as the Level One boss would get you fired.

Final Verdict: When you’re the first to come out with a revolutionary next-generation system, and then have the audacity to name it after one of the books of the Old Testament, you’re making a bold statement. And that statement should not be “Buy a Genesis and get a free copy of Altered Beast! It’s just like Bad Dudes, except with werewolves!”

After going through a huge boom in the 1980s, pro wrestling hit a slump during the early-90s. Some say it was a lack of creativity, others blame the absence of new talent to replace aging superstars, while many thought the cause was lame gimmicks and storylines (the Red Rooster, anyone?). After playing WWF Super Wrestlemania, however, I’m convinced that the problem was awful licensed games giving the “sport” a bad name.

Wreslting games are one of those kinds of games that usually get a free pass from critics despite being really bad, since critics think wrestling fans are idiots. Wrestling fans prove them right by running out and buying horrible wrestling games. As long as the characters in the game kind of look like their real-life (and that’s a mind-bendingly relative term when discussing a wrestling game) counterparts, and the game doesn’t cause the console to overheat and start on fire, everyone’s happy. That’s as true now as it was back in the Genesis days.

With the Macho Man down and out, Hulk decides to do the Funky Chicken

You can tell this game is going to be a disaster right from the character select screen. There are 8 WWF Superstars to choose from, including a few big names of the era such as Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, and the “Macho Man” Randy Savage. However, they inexplicably left out both Bret Hart and the Undertaker in order to have enough room to get Irwin R. Shyster and Papa Shango into the game. That would be like inducting Ratt and Candlebox into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame ahead of the Doors and Led Zeppelin. And though I haven’t played every fighting game ever made, I seriously have to believe that this is the only one where over 10% of the roster is made up of evil tax accountants.

In the ring, all of the wrestlers share the same assortment of about 15 moves, most of which are done by jamming on a specific button while grappling with your opponent. It’s hard enough to engage your opponent in a grapple, let alone actually win one, so it’s usually better just to mash the punch button and avoid the process all together. As a result, each match quickly degenerates into a routine of pummeling your opponent in the face until he falls down and then repeatedly stomping on his genitals. Just like the real thing!

In order to accurately portray all your favorite WWF Superstars, the game goes to great lengths to make them look and move just like their real-life counterparts. Oh no, wait, I was thinking of a good game. Sorry, it’s a defense mechanism by brain uses to sheild itself from the damage that prolonged exposure to something like this can cause. What I meant to say was that everyone in the game is the same height and body shape, so every wrestler kind of looks kind of the same except for their outfit. The crowd isn’t animated at all, and the artists made the mistake of drawing the fans frozen right in the middle of a rousing cheer, which adds a certain creepiness to the atmosphere.

Graphics: Unless your idea of pro wrestling involves two identical twins wearing Halloween costumes of their favorite wrestlers while fighting in the middle of a wax museum, these graphics aren’t very realistic.

Sound: As bad as the rest of this game is, its one redeeming feature is that it does include the entrance music for each wrestler in the game, so at least you can rock out to the Ultimate Warrior’s music on the character select screen…

Control: …before going out and trampling on the British Bulldog’s dong for 10 minutes.

Hulk dries off his neck with his new “Hulk Rules” bath towel

Final Verdict: Not only did this game finish 9th on our list, but Super Wrestlemania is actually the worst of 4 WWF licensed games to be released on the Genesis. Keep in mind that one of those other WWF games was a horrendous knock-off of Mortal Kombat with wrestlers for all the characters and Vince McMahon screaming nonsense after every move. The people at Flying Edge and Acclaim must have some kind of vendetta against us personally because, let’s face it, making a game worse than that isn’t something that happens by accident.

One of the really nice things about being a big, successful publisher like Electronic Arts is the opportunities it gives you for cross-promotion. Every copy of Madden or Road Rash you sell can be packaged with a small catalog full of ads for your other games. People will look at it and think, “Hey, I liked NHL ’94, and I liked Might and Magic; so I bet I’d like Dark Castle, too.” The downside to this approach is that it can cost you customers in the long run because once they actually play Dark Castle, those people will probably become become Amish just to make sure they never have to play a Genesis again.

Dark Castle began its life as a Mac game in 1986, which EA later converted to the Genesis and released in 1991. It was mildly popular on the Mac, but considering that most of the other “games” available for the Mac in the mid ‘80s were either about munching numbers or ill-fated trips to Oregon, Dark Castle’s relative popularity may have been just a bit misleading. Electronic Arts had some good fortune converting PC games to the Genesis, but most of those games, like Populous and Starflight, were pretty unique compared to the rest of the Genny’s library. Dark Castle was a horribly designed platformer with God-awful control. The Genesis had like a million of those, and the other ones usually at least had a movie license.

In the game, you play as Prince Duncan and attempt to navigate the titular fortress in order to face the Black Knight. Being a spectacular dumbass, you endeavor to do this armed only with a bag of rocks, with the plan to obtain a magic shield and fireball spell during your explorations of the castle. Sure, it’s only a Dark Castle, filled with traps, monsters and your worst enemy. Why not take your time and make a few extra stops to pick up all your equipment after you get there?

Mr. Mullet ponders whether to try his luck in the mystery rooms, or just take the middle door to Burger King.

As silly as that plotline is, story is really a small part of any Genesis game, and DC’s most significant flaws lie elsewhere. The biggest problem is control. And level design. And graphics. And sound.

The castle is broken down into 4 areas, creatively named Shield, Fireball, Black Knight and Trouble. Each area is then broken out into 3 or 4 stages that you must progress through. Except that you probably never will, because this is one of the most unfair games you’ll ever come across. Each stage contains multiple enemies that can kill you instantly by touching you, and your only defense is to throw rocks at them, which are difficult to aim. Rather than simply pressing the direction you wish to throw the rock, moving up or down makes clockwise-counterclockwise adjustments to your arm’s angle, and pressing the button throws a rock. Killing each enemy requires a fair amount of trial and error, which would be fine if all your enemies were asleep or didn’t move around much. It doesn’t work as well when they are kind of fast and trying to kill you. Also, your arm remains pointed at whatever angle it was last aimed, which not only makes the game harder, but also looks ridiculous.

And should you run out of rocks, you’re really in trouble. There are plenty of extra bags of rocks lying around, but I never figured out how to pick them up. My best guess is that they forgot that button when they converted the game over to the Genesis (the only copies of the game I could find were cartridge only, apparently not too many collectors felt the need to preserve Dark Castle’s instructions or original box for posterity). Of course, that’s the least of the game’s control problems. Walking off even the most minuscule edge (including ones so small you don’t always see them right away) will cause your character to fall down and become stunned for several seconds, which almost always means getting eaten by bats. You can jump, but you have no control over how far, so every time you press the button your character launches himself like a world class track and field champion. This means that you’ll have to find to exact right spot to jump from or risk leaping way past your intended target, to almost certain death either from falling or from landing on some enemy. There have been games that were successful despite putting similar control limitations on your characters (think Jumpman or Pitfall!), but those games accommodated for it by allowing you a little bit of leeway. With it’s brutal controls and unforgiving level designs, Dark Castle is basically handing you a jumbo crayon and asking you to paint the Mona Lisa.

Graphics: Having originally started out as a Mac game, Dark Castle has an art style more similar to computer games. Really, really ugly computer games.

Sound: The game features a lot of digitized sound, which was a big deal back when it first came out. In 1986. You know what else seemed like a dazzling technical achievement back then? Trapper Keepers.

Control: Whoever decided to make aiming your rocks a process similar to targeting a mortar round seriously needs to be put on some kind of game industry employment blacklist.

If you throw a rock at a high flying enemy, you’ll probably spend the rest of the stage holding your arm up as though you were carrying the imaginary torch in the opening ceremonies of the Crazy People Olympics.

Final Verdict: Dark Castle is a game with so many problems that its hard to keep track of them all. Simply put, this game does everything wrong.