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There’s a reason why Nintendo is still going strong today — has made some of the greatest videogames of all time, from Super Mario World to The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. Over the years, Nintendo has created a variety of different games systems, from the NES and Game Boy to the Wii U and Switch, and those consoles have allowed gamers of all ages to enjoy a staggering variety of games. Of course, it’s not just Nintendo who make amazing games for Nintendo consoles, and the following book is a testament to that. The Retro Gamer team has painstakingly looked at the many great games to have appeared on Nintendo hardware over the years, and put together a definitive list of 100 games that you really must experience. Additionally, we’ve scoured our archives to deliver fantastic in-depth articles on a large number of the featured games. If you loved playing Nintendo while you were growing up, or have only just discovered the company’s consoles, you'll find this book to be an essential guide. Now excuse us — we're off to play Breath Of The Wild...

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This bookazine is printed on recycled paper. It’s important that we care about our planet and make a difference where we can, for us and every generation that follows.

GAMES 10 REAY ERORE YOU DIE CLT LS LT

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE - NINTENDO CONSOLES EDITION

Your guide to the best games to play on Nintendo's systems, from arcade hits like Donkey Kong to the Switch masterpiece, Breath Of The Wild

COIN-OP CAPERS: DONKEY KONG

Everything you need to know about Nintendo's arcade masterpiece, including how to beat it

GAME CHANGERS: SUPER MARIO BROS

Discover how Shigeru Miyamoto's 8-bit platformer helped define Mario's later adventures

REVISITING DUCK HUNT We take a look back at the fun light-gun shooter that became an essential NES launch game

ULTIMATE GUIDE: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

The first entry in the Zelda series remains a brilliant game and this in-depth guide will help explain why

THE MAKING OF: BATTLETOADS Find out how Rare looked to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as inspiration for its new fighter

ULTIMATE GUIDE: 0) ed ANd (0H 130 os)

Discover why Nintendo's classic platformer remains one of the best NES games

RETRO REVIVAL: KID ICARUS It's not the best-known NES game, but this classy adventure is still worth playing

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THE MAKING OF: TETRIS

Discover how the Game Boy version of the popular puzzle game became a worldwide hit that drove Game Boy sales into the stratosphere

ULTIMATE GUIDE: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING

We reveal the many reasons why this remains Link's greatest portable adventure. Will you be able to awaken the Wind Fish?

GAME CHANGERS: POKEMON RED, BLUE & YELLOW

Discover how Game Freak's collect-'em-up became one of the most successful Nintendo franchises of all time

THE MAKING OF: MONSTER MAX Jon Ritman reveals how he worked with Bernie Drummond to create one of the best isometric adventures to appear on the Game Boy

RETRO REVIVAL: SUPER MARIO LAND 2: SIX GOLDEN COINS

Drew Sleep explains why he'll always take a date with Mario over any evening with the musician Jools Holland

ULTIMATE GUIDE: CONTRA III: THE ALIEN WARS

Get the lowdown on Konami's incredible run-and- gun, fromits fantastic bosses to its vast array of explosive weapons

THE MAKING OF: YOSHI'S ISLAND The directors of Super Mario World's sequel discuss how they pushed the platform genre as far as it could go ona 16-bit system

100 GAME CHANGERS: UU Ona Find out what happened when Mario got bored of plumbing and decided to take a go kart for aspin, inventing anew sub genre in the process

104 THE MAKING OF: WILD GUNS We speak to the team behind the incredible Super Nintendo action game and learn how they successfully reinvented the cult blaster fora brand-new generation

108 THE MAKING OF: DONKEY KONG COUNTRY

Rare's Brendan Gunn and Gregg Mayles take us behind the scenes of the SNES game that helped revive interest in Donkey Kong

114 THE MAKING OF: SHADOWRUN Find out how the team at Beam Software created an exciting digital version of FASA‘s popular RPG for the Super Nintendo

120 RETRO REVIVAL: PILOTWINGS Why this early Super Nintendo flight simulator remains one of the best games you can enjoy on iat -eNV) Cla)

122 SUPER MARIO 64 - NINTENDO’S 3D GAME CHANGER Experts within the platform genre explain why Super Mario 64 was one of the most important platformers you're ever likely to play

132 THE MAKING OF: DIDDY KONG RACING Discover how the team at Rare took inspiration from Mario Kart 64 to create their exciting adventure-based alternative

WAKE UP, | WANT TO GO ON

AN ADVENTURE TOO...

136 THE MAKING OF: SPACE STATION SILICON VALLEY We go behind the scenes of one of the zaniest games to ever grace the Nintendo 64

140 GAME CHANGERS: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME Nintendo's first 3D Zelda not only pushed the company to its limits, but also helped to reinvent the adventure genre. Find out how

144 GOLDENEYE: THE DECLASSIFIED REPORT Allnine main members of the original GoldenEye team reassemble to discuss how they made one of the system's best first-person shooters

158 CLASSIC MOMENTS: LYLAT WARS We've collected all the greatest bits from Nintendo's incredible space shooter. How many of them do you remember playing?

160 THE MAKING OF: SNA Re yall

Producer Masato Maegawa explains how Treasure’s dynamic run-and-gun pushed the Nintendo 64 to its absolute limits

164 THE MAKING OF: BANJO-KAZOOIE

We speak to the talented team that took on the might of Super Mario 64

172 RETRO REVIVAL: BEETLE ADVENTURE RACING!

Darran Jones explains why you need to seek out this entertaining N64 racer

174 THE MAKING OF: RESIDENT EVIL REMAKE Discover how Capcom used the power of the GameCube to completely reinvent its classic PlayStation survival horror game

180 GAME CHANGERS: METROID PRIME

Itcertainly took along time for a 3D Metroidto arrive, but Nintendo and Retro Studios ensured it was certainly worth the wait

184 THE MAKING OF: STAR WARS: ROGUE LEADER The team at Factor 5 reveal how they managed to make one of the best Star Wars games to ever appear on the GameCube

190 RETRO REVIVAL: RESIDENT EVIL 4

Capcom's fourth entry inits popular series reinvented the genre andremains the best Resident Evil game, especially on the Wii

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Donkey Kong

= Year: 1981 = Platform: Arcade

Nintendo’s stint in the arcade business was relatively brief, 1 00 as its rapid rise to dominance in the console business during the

Eighties made the coin-op business something of a secondary concern. But it’s impossible to ignore this period of the developer's history, as it gave us Donkey Kong- the first appearance of the titular ape, as well as a moustachioed hero by the name of Mario, both designed by Shigeru Miyamoto.

It's not just a museum piece, though

— Donkey Kong is an early classic of the platform genre, and one that still draws fierce competition from high-score chasers around the world. While the game has a simple goal — either reach the top of the screen or pop the rivets from scaffolding, depending on the stage — it's incredibly tricky to play due to the unpredictable movement of the enemies. If you feel like challenging yourself, play it today.

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Final Fantasy VI

= Year: 1994 = Platform: SNES

The SNES isn’t exactly short of great RPGs, and that's 99 exactly why you should pay attention when people tell you that

Final Fantasy Vlis one of the console’s best. The game shows just how far the developer had come graphically on the SNES - seriously, go back and compare it to Final Fantasy lV — and featured the best game design the series had seen. But it was the plot that really did the heavy lifting, as the game featured the best writing of the series’ Nintendo years. The main antagonist, Kefka, proved to be an especially memorable villain thanks to his flamboyance, dark one-liners and truly terrifying nihilism.

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95 Monster Max

= Year: 1995 = Platform: Game Boy

Following in the footsteps of games such as Head

Over Heels, Monster Maxis the final evolution of

Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond's isometric adventure formula. The game was fantastic and received great reviews in 1994, but it sold poorly (eV R COMM acl (ct ioe Despite being a lost classic, it’s still pretty easy to pick up, so do that.

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This rhythm action game tasks players with doing all manner of odd things in time with music, from plucking hairy onions to guiding a rabbit across the sea. Nintendo’s final Game Boy Advance game was only released in Japan, but you should track it down anyway - it’s not particularly complex, but its accessibility and sense of humour work wonders.

93 Super Mario Maker 2

= Year: 2019 ® Platform: Switch

When Nintendo hands players the keys to the Mushroom Kingdom, things get a little bit weird. Creating your own levels is enjoyable and Nintendo includes 100 stages, but go online and you'll find bizarre storytelling stages, spectacular automatic runs and some truly evil challenge courses designed by sadists. These break all of Nintendo’s rules, and that’s the fun of it.

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Bayonetta 2

@ Year: 2014 = Platform: Wii U

] 1 hardcore action gamers to the Wii U, Nintendo decided to rescue Platinum Games' bewitching heroine — Bayonetta 2 had already been started, but shelved at publisher Sega's behest. It didn't save the troubled console, but players got a tremendous game out of the deal. The

When it was looking for a way to bring

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Sonic Rush

Year: 2005 = Platform: DS

Given Sonic’s origins as a character

designed to compete with Nintendo, it’s

ironic that he’s flourished on Nintendo hardware — and Sonic Rushis a great example of that. The idea of a 2D Sonic platform game was nothing new, but the series’ first DS game revitalised the formula by employing 3D sparingly for mid-stage interludes and boss battles, as well as introducing a boost mechanic that allowed Sonic or newcomer Blaze to charge straight through enemies at top speed. The icing on the cake was an awesome soundtrack by Hideki Naganuma, who successfully merged Sonic’s signature upbeat audio with the sample-heavy style he had perfected in the Jet Set Radio series.

original game had inherited a fine hack-and-slash template from the Devil May Cry series, which many of its developers had worked on, and the sequel further refines it with improved pacing and an even more beautiful art direction. The game throws overwhelming numbers of enemies at you, but its genius is that you always feel able to conquer them.

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Super Mario Bros 3

= Year: 1988 = Platform: NES

Super Mario Bros was an astounding platform 87 game, and it’s fair to say that Super Mario Bros

2 wasn't quite what players had in mind for a follow-up — whether that was the sadistic pseudo-expansion Japanese players got, or the reskinned Doki Doki Panic released internationally. Super Mario Bros 3 was the true successor, and it didn’t disappoint — it was bigger and better in every way. The world map allowed players to chart their own course through the game. New power-ups like the raccoon suit gave Mario new

abilities, increasing the scope of level design. Graphics were

completely overhauled and refined, and

Nintendo's design team really began r)) courses that have defined Mario to

<i the music was greatly enhanced with (Ay) sampled drum beats. Additionally, eT wy * to hit its stride, coming up with the tricky and imaginative assault 4 this day, with the excellent airship stages as highlights. Nothing else \S € on the NES comes close.

PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

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Tetris

= Year: 1989 = Platform: Game Boy

Alexey Pajitnov’s classic puzzle game is so simple 86 that it seems like it should be dull. After all, your sole

aim is to manipulate blocks to create unbroken rows until you've failed enough times that there’s no room left on the screen. But we love turning order into chaos, and the tension of seeing how long you can last against the ever-increasing speed of the blocks turns a simple game into a deliciously addictive one. If that wasn't enough, the game's music was just as catchy — just look at those screenshots and tell us you can’t hear Korobeiniki. Everyone from world leaders to your grandmother loves Tetris. Join them, now.

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Xenoblade Chronicles

= Year: 2010 = Platform: Wii

Though it’s best known for its ability to woo casual 85 players, the Wii underwent a JRPG-driven renaissance

late in its life, thanks to games like Pandora’s Tower and The Last Story, but Xenoblade Chronicles led the charge. While the plot was pretty standard fare for the genre, the game's design was forward-thinking, with a real-time battle system that blended automatic attacks with manually activated Arts, and systems that allow you to intercept and deliberately lure enemy attacks. The open environments and streamlined quest system also helped to drive the genre forward. If you're without a Wii, there's a very good new Nintendo 3DS port available too, or you could wait for the incoming Switch remaster.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

Wi] from riding the horse Epona to entering the pit of Jabu-Jabu's belly. Many of its innovations have been pinched by other games, from the Z-targeting system to auto- jumping, but Ocarina Of Time remains in a class of its own. A3DS update also exists.

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 13

What happens when

you remove Kirby’s

ability to hoover

up enemies with

his almighty gob?

According to this

game, he just finds

another way to take on all manner of abilities — in this case, reconstituting his yarn body into new forms, including cars and parachutes, so what could have been a simple graphical gimmick is elevated by Good-Feel’s design ingenuity.

79 1080° Snowboarding

= Year: 1998 = Platform: Nintendo 64

Nintendo's winter

sports hit blew away

the competition at

the time, thanks to its

grounded and realistic

approach to the sport

of snowboarding, po % emphasising technical fundamentals over insane grabs and getting unrealistic air. The game was also beautiful, with solid, detailed character models and neat graphical effects that hadn't previously been seen elsewhere, like lens flare and sunlight glinting off the snow.

78 DuckTales i {

Capcom was well known for turning out great Disney licensed platformers during the NES era, and DuckTales is the most fondly remembered of the lot. Part of that will be because of the game’s non-linear structure, which required you to

collect items in various stages to progress, > 4 but largely it’s because hopping ») around on Scrooge McDuck’s A cane is just great fun.

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Year: 2001 = Platform: Game Boy Advance

Prior to the launch of the

Game Boy Advance, only

Japanese audiences had been able to sample the delights of Intelligent Systems’ turn-based strategy games — there were six Wars games prior to Advance Wars. When we finally got the chance to experience them, we wondered where they had been all our lives. Advance Wars’ dinky

tanks and cutesy soldiers provided a universal appeal, with accessible yet deep strategic gameplay to back it up, and a structure that suits portable play. With a lengthy single-player campaign, excellent multiplayer and a range of commanding officers with their own unique powers to master, Advance Wars will keep your inner general satisfied for ages.

Tes - An

latoon

Year: 2017 = Platform: Switch

Sp

Splatoon was the surprise hit of the Wii U's

troubled life, but the sequel took the formula to the

next level. The family friendly shooter delivered similar thrills to its predecessor, with territorial coverage and objective control emphasised over splatting opponents in modes such as Turf War and Tower Control, and it allowed players to defend the honour of ketchup and mayonnaise in Splatfests. But as well as new weapons and clothing, the game adds more substantial single-player content (particularly in Octo Expansion) and the ability to splat your friends in local networked games. Plus, new Inkopolis News hosts Pearl and Marina proved to be worthy successors to Callie and Marie!

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

Contra Ill: The Alien Wars

= Year: 1992 = Platform: SNES

Konami's classic run-and-gun channels the spirit of every 7 1 classic action movie into a game that is packed with crazy

weapons, crazier enemies and countless explosions. As the player battles the invading alien menace through futuristic war zones, the SNES is pushed to its limits - the game features enormous bosses, high- speed highway chases and even two top-down stages that use Mode 7 for rotation. The developer's even achieves the seemingly impossible, with a rotating boss and a rotating floor at the end of stage two! It’s not an easy game, but you can drag a friend along for the ride for support — and trust us, they'll thank you when you do.

) 3 F-Zero

. Year 1990 ag Platform: SNES

The SNES was a powerful machine when it hit the scene 79 at the beginning of the Nineties, but it needed a killer game to _

demonstrate just how it differed from the competition — and as Re one of just two games available at launch, Nintendo put heavy faith in F-Zero as the game to do it. The futuristic racing game was incredibly fast, but it was also amazingly smooth thanks to the console’s signature Mode 7 feature, which allowed smooth 3D transformations of a background plane. The soundtrack, created from sampled sounds, featured highly memorable compositions right from the first Mute City track. Of course, proving the machine's power was one thing, but F-Zero was more than just a technical showcase. The game featured an exquisite handling model and tricky track design that pushed players to their limits, as well as a devilish elimination race format that turned an impressive game into an instant classic.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 15

16 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

Star Wars Rogue Squadron Il: Rogue Leader

= Year: 2001 ® Platform: GameCube

Fans had been thrilled with the original Star Wars: 66 Rogue Squadron, which was a well designed space

combat game with impressive N64 visuals. But the sequel absolutely blew it away, demonstrating the power of the GameCube with the most ing oor yar authentic Star Wars experience TS that had ever been seen on Cr cea eatin a home console. The game design hadn't changed a great deal, but every X-Wing shot sounded as crisp as you could hope for, and every detail of the Death Star seemed to have been recreated in loving detail. Forget playing Star Wars —when you play as Rogue Leader, the immersion is great enough that you might as well be Luke Skywalker himself.

The Le end Of Zelda: A Link To The Past

= Year: 1991 = Platform: SNES

After experimenting with a different 67 style in Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link,

Nintendo went back to the original formula for the series’ 16-bit debut, to stunning effect. Using the power of the new SNES hardware, Nintendo could create dramatic scenes with rain and fog, and the story was told in more detail than ever before. Meanwhile, Link’s quest to rescue Zelda and save Hyrule would take him to another dimension, as he visited an alternate ‘dark world’ that mirrored his own. Many feel it’s the best of the series, and it's telling that Nintendo didn’t even try to top it until it had a whole new technological toolbox.

Metroid Fusion

Year: 2002 = Platform: Game Boy Advance

Although many point to Vetroia's

non-linear map and acquisition of new

abilities as its signature, early games in the series had always been marked by a sense of isolation - Samus Aran was alone, and by extension so were you. Metroid Fusion turned that on its head by introducing the SA-X, a villainous doppelganger that stalks the real Samus throughout the game, only to unleash potentially deadly attacks just when you least expect them. Worse yet, it’s just as powerful as a fully powered-up Samus, and for much of the game that puts the real deal at a distinct disadvantage. Being alone suddenly seemed far more appealing after playing Metroid Fusion.

Super Mario 64

@ Year: 1996 = Platform: Nintendo 64

It’s hard to overstate the impact that 6 Yh Super Mario 64 had on videogames back

in the mid-Nineties. Most developers were still getting to grips with 3D game design, only for Nintendo to come along and deliver an absolute masterclass — everything from character movement to the camera system was leagues ahead of what any other team was putting out, to the point that it might just be the game we've most often seen cited as an influence by other developers. Just controlling

Mario was a joy, and the designers cleverly recognised that 3D movement fundamentally changed the game. Instead of linear obstacle courses, Super Mario 64's courses had no single end point and instead supported a variety of different objectives, many of which were extraordinary in their creativity. Even today, this classic remains

the benchmark by which all 3D Mario adventures

are judged, proving its enduring legacy as a classic platform game.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

63 Zack & Wiki: Quest

For Barbaros’ Treasure ® Year: 2007 ® Platform: Wii

This criminally overlooked adventure game

revives the old point-and-click formula using the

Wii Remote in place of a mouse. Taking control of the boy pirate Zack, you choose which objects to investigate, then use them to solve puzzles by mimicking the action you wish to perform using

» the motion controls. It sounds silly, but it’s an inventive and clever use of the technology.

era iit leat ln

= Year: 1993 = Platform: SNES

This isometric action-

RPG borrows its setting from the popular pen- and-paper RPG of the same name, drawing heavily on cyberpunk themes. The noir themes were unusual °

in videogames at the

time, and the cursor-based interaction system

gave you the ability to quickly shift from pressing pedestrians for information to defending yourself from the gun-toting baddies lurking in the shadows.

6) Kid Icarus: Uprising

= Year: 2012 = Platform: 3DS

The most unlikely Nintendo comeback of the decade was driven by Masahiro Sakurai’s desire to create a third-person shooter, which he felt would show off the unique capabilities of the 3DS. Though it was a far cry from past entries and had some control problems, it was well received by critics and succeeded in highlighting the strengths of the hardware.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 17

18 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

56 Pokemon Sna

= Year: 1999 ® Platform: Nintendo 64

While players had plenty of fun training their Pokémon, it wasn’t until Pokémon Snap that they really had a chance to watch them be cute, funny and occasionally bizarre as they acted naturally. tn wm Cast as a photographer, 3 - your goal was to get

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ee) hl al le NES

Pit’s first adventure shows you how ae Ey) game can be when genre conventions have yet

to be established. This platform game revels in its many vertical stages, and allows Pit to wrap cael the playfield, entering j on the left of the

screen after he leaves

the right side. It’s a

strange experience

today, but NES

fanatics swear by it.

Shovel Knight

sought to

ictol feral CR tals)

thrills of NES

platformers

like DuckTales,

Mega Man and Castlevania Ill. But the developer Yacht Club Games knew that full authenticity was a fool’s choice, so it did graphical things the NES couldn't, and avoided repeating the flaws that the classics did possess. The result? A game that matches the rosy tint of your glasses.

meee ea

= Year: 1992 = Platform: SNES

Nintendo's attempt to create a multiplayer F-Zero never bore fruit on the SNES, as the system couldn’t handle a map of the required size while running split-screen multiplayer. But the project that came out of it was even more valuable, as Mario Kart is arguably gaming’s most successful franchise spin-off. Many favour this original | Slee I DUES eam Ta tava OR Ue 1 ge ae = as driving skill yr played a greater role in race ec R arama) items picked up along the way.

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

Kirby’s Adventure

# Year: 1993 ys NES

In his Game Boy debut, Kirby had been

a cute but slightly unremarkable character

—he could inflate himself like a balloon and suck up enemies, but that was it. His first home console appearance was the game that really defined him, as it was here that he gained his copy ability. By swallowing enemies, Kirby could use their abilities, giving him access to a large range of moves without the need for convoluted controls or a contrived power- up system. The game was a technical marvel too, Y with colourful graphics that showed that Nintendo's 8-bit hardware could still turn out an attractive game, some ten years after it was first engineered.

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Professor Layton And The Lost Future

Year: 2008 = Platform: DS

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The third game in the popular

Professor Layton series sees the

puzzle-solving professor meeting a future version of his apprentice, Luke. Things have gone terribly wrong in his time, and he needs Layton’s help to set things right again. Like the previous Professor Layton games, this title plays out as an adventure featuring plenty of animated cut scenes, conversations with the locals and of course, a variety of puzzles. These fiendish brainteasers required keen eyesight, a logical thought process and some mathematical skill to solve, and proved to be perfect for kids, seasoned gamers and # even older players that wanted a new challenge to go alongside the likes of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 19

Yoshi's Island

= Year: 1995 = Platform: SNES

Serving as one last hurrah before the Mario team moved 47 over to the N64 for good, Yoshi's Island embraced the contradictory ideals of chasing a hand-drawn, crayon sketch aesthetic while including the high-performance Super FX 2 chip to push technically impressive effects. But while the graphics were lovely, as usual it was the game design that was the real draw. Yoshi's need to keep hold of Baby Mario focused the player, while allowing him to be constantly recovered lowered the difficulty

Cy) compared to Super Mario World. The usual clever stage design and some imaginative we sequences where Yoshi turns into

vehicles made it an unmissable debut for a new platform star.

Castlevania Ill: Dracula’s Curse

= Year: 1989 = Platform: NES

The last of the Castlevania games to appear on the NES follows Trevor Belmont's

attempt to slay the most notorious of all vampires. While the game adopts the template of the original Castlevania with players wandering through challenging platform stages and killing off standard horror monsters, it adds to it tremendously. Branching paths through the game are present, meaning you'll require multiple sessions to see everything, and the game includes extra playable characters with their own abilities. The game’s soundtrack is one of the system's best, but do seek out the Japanese version if you can — the extra sound channels afforded by the Famicom hardware add greatly to the atmosphere.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

Astro Boy: Omega Factor

= Year: 2003 = Platform: Game Boy Advance

Few developers understood action games as 4 4 well as Treasure in its heyday, and this platform beat-

‘em-up is testament to that. As you guide the famous robot boy through various stages, you'll constantly be charging and using a variety of special attacks to stun, repel and destroy huge numbers of enemies. There are plenty of crazy bosses, you'll get to meet loads of Osamu Tezuka’s characters, and the visuals push the hardware to breaking point (really, check out some of the slowdown). The highlight is that just when you think the game is ending, the quest opens up and you get to revisit past stages to set history right and avert a bad ending.

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Super Smash Bros Melee

= Year: 2001 = Platform: GameCube

The first instalment of Nintendo's __ the player base discovered that the game has 45 unconventional crossover fighting avery high skill ceiling, giving the game an

festival was popular, but the unintended second life as a fiercely competitive sequel’s expanded cast and improved visuals fighting game that became a tournament ensured that it found an even greater audience. mainstay. This scene has kept the game alive Super Smash Bros Melee is first and foremost for the best part of two decades, and allowed

a party game, with players encouraged to mix it to remain relevant where its sequels have

it up in crazy stages with items that drastically faded from attention, as some very high-level change the outcome of battles. But in their players love the glitches and balance quirks that drive to best one another, a certain section of can only be found in this version of the game.

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Super Punch-Out!! Year: 1994 = Platform: SNES

Mario had many friends before his SNES debut, but he didn’t really have a proper

SSS ae ane ee ocr sidekick. Thankfully Super Mario World Boxing is a sport that struggles to translate remedied that by introducing Yoshi. As well as being well to videogames, but Nintendo solved the coe baa able to ride the cute dinosaur, Mario could direct him incompatibilities by simply ignoring the rules. — ” to flick out his tongue and snatch enemies back into Super Punch-Out!! pits you against cartoonish his gaping maw. Of course, that alone doesn’t make caricatures such as Super Mario World great. What makes Super Mario ee the reggae fighter Bob y/ World great is its incredible wealth of hidden secrets, £ Charlie, kung fu kick ' with levels having multiple exits that lead to new areas Se >=.) expert Dragon Chan and ; with even more concealed goodies. Finding all of the SD denen UCM ck Curelastl(e) game’s 96 level exits is a true joy that will keep you os BM meM el accilenccrlale! ceri i eel occupied for ages.

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Space Station Silicon VENT = Year: 1997 = Platform: Nintendo 64

(= EM eA eR LCL 8A oo You'd be forgiven for wondering Racing also boasted an adventure mode,

If you want a job done 3 6 why any system with a Mario Kart complete with honest-to-goodness boss battles. properly, do it yourself game would ever need any other Plus, it was a good place to check out the Rare ere) meh Ual-\acte mele kart racing offerings, but Rare answered that stars of the future, including a bear by the name poor Evo can’t do much question emphatically with the incredibly fun of Banjo and some squirrel called Conker. Now, by itself. But it can take Diddy Kong Racing. Mario Kart 64 might have any chance that we could kindly get the Timber possession of other had road racing, but it didn’t have hovercrafts The Tiger platform game we've been waiting so creatures, allowing it to and it certainly didn’t have planes. Diddy Kong patiently for?

solve puzzles and try to

solve the mystery of what happened aboard the space station. This quirky adventure features plenty of humour and some truly innovative ideas.

Super Mario Odyssey

Year: 2017 = Platform: Switch

Mario's most recent 3D adventure is a real treat, incorporating open-world game design that allows you to traverse huge stages and achieve objectives whenever you want. The game's highlight is new pal Cappy, a hat that allows Mario to possess living things including frogs, Koopa Troopers and even colossal dinosaurs, in order to take control of them and complete puzzles.

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Pokemon Red/Blue

= Year: 1996 = Platform: Game Boy

ooo ea

Just when the Game Boy was beginning 32 to look a little bit tired in the mid-Nineties,

this game turned into an enormous cultural phenomenon and gave the system a shot in the arm in Japan, before doing the same internationally a few years later. Pokémon -— or Pocket Monsters, in its original Japanese form — tasks players with collecting 151 colourful critters, which can be trained to battle against one another. Any RPG of that length and quality would have been appreciated, but Pokémon's design was truly inspired, turning RPG conventions on their heads. Random battles went from being an annoying interruption to a welcome chance to add a powerful ally to your party. What's more, the game took advantage of the system’s portability by letting players get out and trade with one another — and to ensure they did, creatures were split across the versions. It's still just as compelling today.

IT?S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS.

The Legend Of Zelda =

= Year: 1986 ® Platform: NES =

To really get a feel for how the first entry in this action-RPG 3 1 series felt at the time, you need to play it without the temptation

to look at a guide or a YouTube walkthrough. Cast your mind back to a simpler time, when information was hard to come by. Walk Link into the cave, grab that sword and shield, and then where do you go? Anywhere. That was the beauty of Ze/da— it gave you a whole world to explore, mysteries to investigate and monsters to slay. The game made you feel like an adventurer and a hero, just like Link on the screen. Too few games do that today.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 23

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WarioWare, Inc: Minigame Mania

Year: 2003 = Platform: Game Boy Advance

The first entry in the WarioWare

series remains the best in our

humble opinion. It’s a series of simple games that need to be completed in a few short seconds and they range from the mundane to the bizarre. You might shake paws with a dog, help a lady sniff an unwelcome bogey back up into her nose or try and catch a pint as it’s passed at you. A new character is introduced on each stage that typically showcases games based around a certain theme, from sports to classic Nintendo games. It won't take long to complete, but you'll be having so much fun you simply won't care about its brevity.

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24 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

Monster Boy And The Cursed Kingdom

= Year: 2018 = Platform: Switch

Originally planned as a sequel 2 6 to Game Atelier'’s Flying Hamster, a

cancelled Kickstarter campaign and a team-up with FDG Entertainment led to this game becoming the latest instalment of the long-running Monster World series. It's a great fit for the game too, as Cursed Kingdom is effectively a fantastic homage to the wonderful Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap. \t's a metroidvania at its heart, with new areas opening up as you unlock new animal

forms that range from a snake that can cling to walls, to a flying fire-breathing dragon and a pig

that can use its snout to sniff out secrets. As your adventure continues, you'll have to continually switch forms in order to solve puzzles, leading to some truly head-scratching, but ultimately satisfying moments. Filled with familiar tunes from the popular series and boasting colourful, outrageous-looking visuals, Cursed Kingdom is an absolute delight. Don't miss it.

Dead Space: Extraction

= Year: 2009 = Platform: Wii

This spin-off of the Dead Space series 25 was tailor-made to suit the more

modest aesthetics and unique control system of the Wi. It’s a fine trade-off delivering an exceptionally creepy horror experience and plenty of opportunity to put your Wii remote through its paces as you shoot down hordes of Necromorphs. Despite its light-gun origins, Extraction is a proper story-fuelled experience with interesting characters, and a constantly twisting plot that neatly ties to the original game.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

Grand Theft Auto:

Chinatown Wars Year: 2009 = Platform: DS

While the series never hit home Nintendo consoles, the DS did get this exceptionally good offering. With a distinctive cel-shaded style, Chinatown Wars is still a blast to play thanks to its decent story and

Pm interesting characters, some \j © clever uses of the DS's touch ; screen and a ridiculously deep drug-dealing minigame. Portable violence i in the palm of your hand.

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Pilotwings Year: 1990 = Platform: SNES

Who would have thought that learning to fly

could be so much fun? Nintendo EAD’s game requires you to master several types of air-based contraptions (as well as skydiving) including jetpacks and hang gliders 8... (a) j=

across progressively = tougher courses. Please your as instructors and you'll be able ie

to take on one final dangerous Ft . mission to show off the many -

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Snake Rattle N Roll

Year: 1990 = Platform: NES

es = Rare released some cracking Se oe CET Ken lceN cM elt acl oy Teck \m old-age eal Meal tclalg i a isometric gem. The aim of

the game is to slither across the large isometric levels

= (ideally with a friend in tow) and eat as many Nibbley Pibbleys as possible. Once you've eaten enough, you can head to the end- of-level scales, weigh yourself and reach the next stage. Hitting enemies causes your snake to lose a segment of its body, meaning you'll want to tackle each stage as carefully as possible.

Banjo-Kazooie Year: 1998 = Platform: Nintendo 64

ry The best N64 platformer

- that isn’t Super Mario 64

$ works largely because of § the interplay between its

two lead characters. The bickering between Banjo the . ,

bear and his bird partner Kazooie » (al re never gets old, while they share al some great moves between them,

X which allow them to navigate the sandbox-styled worlds. It’s easily \ \) the best game in the series and still holds Ss » up today. | el | 7 Y i y 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YO 2)

hn i i)

Despite utilising a first-person perspective, Vetroid

Prime never feels like an all-out shooter. Retro Studios ensures that the focus of Samus’ quest is always on exploration first (just like the earlier games) and making the most out of her new skills, which slowly unlock more and more of the alien planet

she visits. It cleverly blends puzzles with tight level design, offers some tremendous boss encounters, including plenty of classic Metroid villains, and has an incredible atmosphere that still makes it utterly compelling to play through today. It's also available on the Wii with motion-based FF controls

and its two sequels, but the original version still works best for us.

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Fire Emblem 4 Awakening |

= Year: 2012 = Platform: 3DS \N

Due to poor sales of the previous DS game (which 1 6 never received a UK release), Awakening was going to be the last roll of the dice for the series. As a result Intelligent Systems made a number of changes, including the ability to disable the popular ‘permadeath’ feature, having characters pair up in the field, and having heroes defend each other or assist in attacks if they are placed next to each other. These new mechanics offer a whole new level of strategy and also help make the series more accessible than ever. The changes resulted in critical and commercial acclaim and the series is now stronger than it’s ever been.

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Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition

= Year: 2007 = Platform: Wii

has been ported to other systems since it made its debut on

the Wii. The reason for the large number of conversions is that it remains a tremendous romp through the Resident Evil universe, fa) thanks to the return of Leon Kennedy, a brand-new over-the-shoulder viewpoint (that countless games shamelessly stole) a selection of immensely satisfying weapons and a delightfully silly plot. We prefer this Wii version over the GameCube original, as it has all the additional content from the PS2 and PC versions as well as excellent motion controls that genuinely enhance an already amazing game.

1 5 We've lost count of the number of times Capcom’s game

ei Syaeye Lh

= Year: 2017 © Platform: Switch

While it was released on both the Wii 1 yh U and Switch, the latter system is the

version to opt for as it offers far better performance. It’s a fresh reinvention of Nintendo’s long-running series thanks to its open-world setting, the ability to create meals and potions to enhance your abilities, weapon degradation, and a frightfully realistic-feeling world that allows you to manipulate fire and other elements to your own

Mario & Luigi:

Superstar Saga Year: 2003 _ Platform: Game Boy Advance

While it borrows elements from Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi is very much its own game. It features some excellent, easy-to-understand combat mechanics, the story is genuinely enjoyable, and the brothers can combine to create unique new moves. Best of all it’s extremely funny, with plenty of nods to the Mario series.

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advantage. Some Sle larlale(-Ten na taea ET aels gs dungeons compared to earlier games in the ee

but there’s so much to do in Breath Of The Wil fal ai aera (LMA 1h PRS Lol eKe NI Ke tn)

similar games, but it adds plenty of its ownideas ~

and feels incredibly fresh and unique because of

it. It’s quite possibly the finest Zeldagame we've ever played and it leaves us tremendously excited for the recently announced sequel.

AY = BDA

Year: 1999 _ Platform: Game insite

Okay, we're cheating a little here. In addition

to featuring a truly a astonishing portoflrem’s 9 “=~ arcade game, Bob Pape sneakily addedthe second _ } tats = arcade hit too, making — :

this exceptional value for money. The DX is a nod to not only its deluxe status, but a brand new mode which mixes both games together into a suitably epic experience.

Beetle

Adventure Borl| Year: 1999 _ Platform: Ninte: lo 64

This neat arcade-style racer works partly Ree it's great fun to tear around in a Volkswagen Beetle, but also because there’s so much to discover in it; each courseis absolutely _ = = chock full of interesting Gian ue 3 4 shortcuts and alternate rr re * TeoUL wea Ney co LUTTI I ™yY Australian release swaps ry "| At

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Sin And Punishment

= Year: 2000 = Platform: Nintendo 64

While some will argue that the Wii 1 0 sequel is also worthy of inclusion,

we're plumping for Treasure’s original because it often pushes Nintendo's console to near breaking point. Watching Sin & Punishment in action really is something, it flings all sorts of crazy effects around the screen, piles on spectacular set-piece after spectacular set-

8 7

piece, and is all held together by some truly satisfying combat mechanics. Like Super Mario 64, Sin & Punishment's control system is built around the console’s unique-looking pad and it does admittedly take a while to master. Once you do however you'll be able to pull off all sorts of insane moves and look like a gaming god in the process.

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan

= Year: 2005 = Platform: DS

used the touch screen for tacky gimmicks, or as a way

to genuinely enhance their games. Ouendan is a perfect example of the latter school of thought, forcing you to combine intricate taps and strokes to deliver one of the best rhythm action games we've ever played. You effectively take on the role of a cheerleading squad and must pull off your dance moves in order to help a variety of different people. While everything is in Japanese comic-style panels on the top screen to let you easily follow the story. The tunes are superb too, mixing a variety of popular Japanese genres.

© When Nintendo first released the DS, every developer

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e Legend Of Zelda:

Z iP enin oa 1993 = Platform: Game Boy

Many consider this to be the best 2D Zelda and it’s not hard to see why. The dungeon design throughout is truly exceptional, while the inventive Pes fights are taxing, but never overwhelming. = The surprisingly dark storyline is one of the L. best the series has er Reicrce nial ena teehee EAA a | Game Boy never taxes 7 4 the design team’s lofty | ambitions.

Fire Emblem:

Wild Guns

= Year: 1994 = Platform: SNES

of Natsume’s game on release, meaning it

now sells for utterly stupid prices on eBay. Set in a weird world that combines the Wild West with Steampunk, Wild Guns is notable for its gigantic bosses, satisfying shooting mechanics (virtually everything onscreen can be shot to pieces) and neat scoring system. It’s initially hard to acclimatise to due to its interesting setup (you have control of both your character and gunsight), but once it clicks you'll find yourself effortlessly mowing down the hordes of enemies that get thrown at you. An enhanced version was recently re-released on Switch, meaning there's no excuse not to play it.

2 Araaanaly, no one really saw the wrlace

ea MOlm tele) Year: 2005 = Platform: GameCube

A limited release aatcyclarce Cam ile 9 western Fire Emblem released for ahome console now fetches high prices online. 2 It’s worth taking Say the hit, as it has one

GoldenE

= Year: 1997 = Platform: Nintendo 64

in multiplayer) but there’s no denying

1 It’s showing its age a little now (particularly what a landmark title GoldenEye is. Its

of the best stories in the series, plenty of lovable characters and satisfying combat mechanics. Additionally, if you transfer your save to the Wii sequel, Radiant Dawn, your characters in that game will receive handy stat boosts.

Super Mario 3D World

Year: 2013 = Platform: Wii U

It’s rather astonishing that this excellent platformer hasn't been re-released for the Switch. As you’d expect from a 3D Mario game, Super Mario 3D World is filled with clever flourishes, neat gameplay mechanics that never outstay their welcome

and plenty of new suits and items to try out. It

also supports up to four players for some fun multiplayer shenanigans.

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» PUBLISHER: NINTENDO » DEVELOPER: NINTENDO

» RELEASED: 1981 » Platform: ARCADE, VARIOUS

» GENRE: PLATFORMER

30 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

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COIN-OP CAPERS: DONKEY KONG

Donkey Kong

Martyn Carroll takes a definitive look back at Nintendo's timeless classic and unravels its brilliance by speaking to the very people who

know the coin-op intimately

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NINTENDO ERICA INC

hen it comes to iconic videogames, Donkey Kong is the daddy. Created by gaming legend Shigeru Miyamoto and released to huge success in 1981, it's one of the most celebrated and treasured games in history. It goes without saying that it has single-handedly defined the platform genre and introduced us to not one but two of the most popular videogame characters ever — the titular gorilla and his tormentor Mario. Such is its impact that some enduring videogame myths have built up around its creation. Was the game supposed to be called ‘Monkey Kong’ but the name got misinterpreted somewhere along the way? Probably not. Was the game originally designed as a vehicle for Popeye and Brutus? Apparently so. Was the game responsible for saving an ailing Nintendo of America from certain bankruptcy, and providing the Japanese parent with the funding and impetus to develop the Famicom and therefore change the course of gaming forever? Quite possibly.

The facts are that in July 1981 Nintendo produced Donkey Kong as an upgrade kit for Radar Scope, its Galaxian-inspired game released the previous year that, despite initial success, had largely flopped in the US. The majority of US-based Radar Scope machines were converted, clearly indicating that the space shooter hadn't been pulling in as many quarters as hoped. The new game certainly did the trick, as Nintendo quickly went from manufacturing conversion kits to building dedicated cabs to meet the massive demand. This led to two cosmetic ‘flavours’ of Donkey Kong: the new, widely produced blue-coloured cabs with added side art, and the rarer converted Radar Scope cabs that retained their original red paintwork.

A year on from its initial release, Donkey Kong had reportedly earned Nintendo $180 million. This success led to a clamour of console and computer manufacturers looking to license the coin-op. Once more, the whole episode is now swamped in folklore, with deals done that supposedly led to lots of hand-wringing and toy-throwing.

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It's even commonly suggested that Donkey Kong played a part in scuppering negotiations that would see Atari release the Famicom in the US. All that aside, the deals resulted in Coleco receiving the home console rights and Atari settling for the home computer rights.

Coleco immediately played an ace by bundling the game with its ColecoVision console, causing hardware sales to skyrocket. It also put the game out on the Intellivision and Atari 2600 consoles. Such was the popularity of the game that even the scaled-down 2600 version shifted more than 4 million units, generating a massive $100 million in sales. Atari itself released the game on its 400/800 computers and ported it to several others, including the VIC-20, C64, TI-99/4A and Apple II. Inevitably, unlicensed clones with cheeky titles like Donkey King and Killer Gorilla flooded many computer platforms in the early Eighties. Nintendo, meanwhile, capitalised on the success of the original with a couple of arcade sequels and a range of Game & Watch handheld titles. Mario would, of course, go on to dominate Nintendo's character roster for the next decade, but our anthropoidal friend swung back into contention in the mid-Nineties with the release of a new Donkey Kong title on the Game Boy, and the first of Rare’s Donkey Kong Country games for the SNES.

The original game may be approaching its 30th anniversary, but it is most certainly far from being forgotten. In recent years it has even been thrust back into the public consciousness thanks to the high-profile battles over the Donkey Kong high score world record. Die- hard players Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe have also been involved in a long-running battle to claim the world record, with their efforts to one-up each other's achievements memorably chronicled in the 2007 documentary The King Of Kong. Earlier this year, a brand new competitor named Hank Chien appeared and entered the fray, so now it's a three-way fight for the most coveted title in competitive videogaming. In October 2015, Robbie Lakeman claimed the coveted title with a colossal score of 1,177,200 — but it will have probably changed hands again by the time you read this!

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 31

the &€xpert

» NAME: HANK CHIEN

» AGE: 36

» DATE OF BIRTH: 4 AUGUST 1974

» HOMETOWN: NEWYORK, USA

» OCCUPATION: PLASTIC SURGEON

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Bloomin’ Barrels

Jump them, smash them or simply avoid them. Just don’t get flattened by them.

32 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

i Is it true that you only started playing Donkey Kong after seeing the King Of Kong documentary? | think | may have played one game of Donkey Kong prior to watching The King Of Kong, but yes, it's pretty much true | had never played the game. After watching the documentary, | decided to play just for fun. | had no idea where | could find a Donkey Kong machine, but | was aware of MAME. | improved very rapidly on MAME and after three months | reached the kill screen. At that point, | decided to find a public machine and thanks to the internet | found one pretty quickly at Barcade in Brooklyn. | then searched eBay and Craigslist for my own machine and after a few months | was able to find one in reasonable shape for a reasonable price.

| At what point did you realise that you had a chance at the crown? My initial intention was not to break the world record. | really was just playing for fun. In fact, | was going to try to break a million and then sell my machine. | wasn't even sure | could even break a million until | actually did it. It was 13 September 2009 and | had a business trip that day and had a flight to catch in two hours. My high score at the time was around 940,000. | started to play a game in those two hours and | scored 1,037,700 and barely caught my flight. My first million point game was only 12,500 points shy of the world record. At that point | realised | had a shot and | started playing seriously and recording my attempts.

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HOW HIGH CAN YOU GET

» Upon passing the fifth level, the game loops until level 22, where a bug prevents further play.

@ Can you describe the events that led to you scoring 1,061,700 points on 26 February 2010?

After my first million point game, | actually did not play much because | was discouraged by the Twin Galaxies rules for scores over a million. Basically at that time it had to be done live in front of a referee. The rule was changed in November 2009, but with the holidays and work, Donkey Kong took a back seat. However, in early February | put my mind to it. In the coming weeks, | had several very close games, so | knew | could do it. Then came 26 February, a Friday. Ordinarily | would have been at work, but a huge snowstorm covered the city and my car was buried in snow so | was stuck at home with nothing to do but play Donkey Kong. In the evening | had a really good start and didn't die until late in the game. The rest is history.

Be careful jumping to and from the lifts, and be sure not to get yourself caught up in the gears

Jumping Jacks

» Is it better to take the low or high route? Expert players always opt for the latter.

@ Your achievement generated lots of press once Twin Galaxies verified it. It must have been a pretty crazy few weeks for you...

After | broke the world record it was really crazy. People were calling my office, my home, my parents’ home, email, Facebook, you name it. | was flooded, and that’s on top of my ordinary busy life. It was fun to get all that attention, but only for about a day!

Did Billy Mitchell or Steve Wiebe offer their congratulations? Billy Mitchell acknowledged my achievement, but | have not spoken to him directly. | would like to meet him at some point. Steve Wiebe called and emailed to congratulate me personally.

Billy reclaimed the high score in July this year, then Steve grabbed

Things to look out for when

attempting to topple the silly gorilla

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Don’t end up with pie on your face. Time your jumps and beware of the conveyor changing direction.

You need to position yourself carefully to dodge these fast-moving hazards. Tricky in later levels.

» Hank pictured here practising on his very own Donkey Kong cab in his Manhattan apartment.

it once again in September. It looks like neither of these guys plan to give it up any time soon. Are you planning to try to take it back?

Steve is a great player and he has

been working hard to reclaim the world record, so he deserves the top spot. Congratulations to him! | do plan on taking it back, but my main goal is to maximise the game to the best of my ability, whether it is a world record or not. In my original world record game, | held back a lot and made some careless mistakes, so | know | can do a lot better. To score high you have to take a lot of risks and be really aggressive.

@ What kind of high score do you think is possible, with a perfect run? The current world record is nowhere near the maximum. The thing about Donkey Kong is that there are so many variables and so many ways to play

the game, it's hard to say exactly what the maximum score is. | think that the achievable maximum score is close to 1.2 million, but it would require a lot of skill and luck to pull it off. The theoretical maximum is a lot higher — maybe 1.5 million. A great thing about the game

is that the world record will always be beatable. This saga isn’t over yet.

@ There's been talk of The King Of Kong becoming a dramatised movie. If this happened and you were featured in the film, who would you like to play you?

| don’t think there are any Hollywood actors good looking enough to play me, but if | had to choose, maybe Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp could do it! ¥&€

Expert strategies from the newest challenger to the Donkey Kong world record

4 @ TOP TIP « ) For beginners, just clear the boards as fast as you can. On the barrel board always keep an eye on the barrels above you and prepare for the worst case scenario

There really aren't many secrets; it's just a matter of practice

@ BONUS PLAY

2 When playing for a high a] score, it’s a combination of knowing when to hang around and accumulate points and when to finish the stage to claim the bonus. It is not always beneficial to stay around on a board as the bonus timer ticks down very fast, particularly in the later levels. You have to know when you can

‘beat the clock’ and when you just have to call it quits

3 @ HAMMER TIME

Ws Whether to grab the hammer or not is a

complicated question. On the barrel board the top hammer is safe, but the bottom hammer is dangerous. | grab it when I'm playing for points but when I'm playing for survival I'll usually skip it. On the conveyers and rivets, that’s even more complicated. |

could probably write a short book on it

4 @ RIVET ROUTE

4 ) There are two patterns on the rivets that are

commonly used, yet there is no consensus even among the top players as to which is better for survival or for points. In one pattern you clear all the rivets on the left and then try to grab the top hammer. In the other, you clear all of the rivets except the one on the level with the bottom hammer, then grab the bottom hammer and run across. Even those two patterns are not foolproof and you have to know what to do when it falls apart.

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COIN-OP CAPERS: DONKEY KONG

The SequWeLsS

There are dozens of Donkey Kong spin-offs, but only three true sequels

Peer ieee Donkey Kong Jr ry é Oe Released: 1982 : [exer]

The success of Donkey Kong meant that the sequel arrived faster than a tossed barrel on a greased girder. But what's this? There's not a single barrel to be seen. Donkey Kong has been caged by Mario and the moustachioed one has unleashed all manner of jungle critters in an attempt to stop DK’s plucky son from © rescuing his dad. Donkey

Kong Jris a platform game, but a lot of time is spent traversing vines and chains, which can be cumbersome. It doesn’t help, either, that Junior is rubbish at jumping, and the result is a slightly awkward sequel that, while utterly charming, lacks the smoothness and grace of the original.

Donkey Kong 3 Released: 1983 DK Jr played a little on the

sluggish side, but you certainly couldn’t level that at this fast-paced shooter that’s far removed from the platforming roots of the series. The title character is once again the cranky nemesis, but Mario

by now had better things to do, leaving goofy urchin Stanley to step in and deal with DK. The frantic action takes place over three stages set in a greenhouse, and in each one Stanley must continually blast the pesky primate with his insect spray gun, forcing him up into the rafters where stinging bees ultimately await him. It works brilliantly as an arcade game, in that you offer up a credit and get your five minutes of fun, but the game lacks variety and doesn’t warrant repeated plays, thereby denying it the lasting appeal of its forebears.

Donkey Kong (GB) Released: 1994 When it comes to resurrecting

and reinventing a franchise, nobody does it better than Nintendo. This game, launched alongside the Super Game Boy in 1994, is a perfect example. It begins as a nifty homage to the original coin-op, with the arcade’s four screens authentically reproduced with a few little extras thrown in, but instead of the game looping back to the beginning once DK hits the deck, it instead presents the player with a squillion extra screens to negotiate. In the majority of these, Mario must find an oversized key and carefully carry it to the locked door, which leads to the next level. Part-puzzler, part-platformer, this is an excellent update that deservedly spawned its own spin-off series in the Mario vs Donkey Kong games on the GBA and DS.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 33

The machine

Chris, a 39-year-old IT support worker from Gresham, Oregon, had hankered after his own Donkey Kong cab ever since first playing the game in his local bar and grill aged 11. He ran an ad on Craigslist looking for a red DK cab and a lady not too far away answered his call. It transpired that she’d acquired it from a local vendor who originally purchased it new as a Radar Scope machine. Unfortunately, it needed a lot of work. “lt was one step away from a landfill,” Chris tells us. “The bezel was so scratched | could barely make out the monitor. The coin door was rusted and the coin mechs were jammed up. To make matters worse, someone had attempted to cut a hole in one of the sides. | wanted a red DK really badly but man, this thing was a mess.” Undeterred, Chris transported the cab home and began the process of bringing it back to its brilliant best. “Donkey Kong was and always will be a passion for me,” he says, “and it’s just as much fun now as it was back then.”

To restore my Donkey Kong, | began by lightly sanding down the entire cabinet to give the primer something to adhere to. All of the imperfections including the busted edge and the place where someone had attempted to cut a hole were reconstructed with Bondo putty and sanded flat. The primer was shot with a spray gun. | couldn't get the oil paint to shoot correctly so it was applied using a foam roller. The paint colour was matched by removing a red chip from underneath the coin door where it hadn't seen daylight since 1981.

The original board had developed

bad RAM somewhere. Since | don’t have the expertise to do this kind of a board repair, | sent it to Dick Millikan of Auburn, Washington, who is known for board repairs. Dick sent me a working board. Being a huge Donkey Kong fan, it was mandatory that the Brasington kit was installed. This is an add-on kit that enables the game to save high scores. It's also necessary if you want to install the D2K: Jumpman Returns hack. D2K is amazing!

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34 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

The monitor is the original Sanyo i 20EZ that has been recapped — this i is where all the capacitors on the} monitor PCB are replaced. It is currently using the original flyback.

™ CONTROL PANEL |

The control panel has been replaced with a reproduction. Interestingly enough, the original panel was using the Radar Scope red button for jump, which | chose to re-use. The P1 and P2 buttons are the original Nintendo dark blue. The new instruction cards are also reproduction, as well as the dust cover.

The control panel itself

is in good

COIN-OP CAPERS: DONKEY KONG

In the mid-Seventies, while in college studying electrical engineering, | was hired by a small engineering consulting company. Among other projects, | developed and patented a handheld billiards game called Bank Shot, based on a 4-bit microprocessor and an array of 72 LEDs. When the Atari 2600 came out the handheld games started to suffer at the expense of the newest, greatest thing — videogames. In response, | bought an Atari machine, opened it up and reverse- engineered it so that we could compete in that space. I've been developing games ever since.

At the time, around 1981/1982, there weren't a whole lot of independent

It was a three to four month schedule, which was about half the time that should have been allotted. The deadline was immovable, with the ROM cartridge needing to go into manufacturing in time for a holiday shipment. | worked without sleep for the final 72 hours to deliver it on time. It took me a month to physically recover from the ordeal.

There were two factors that prevented me from including the other two screens. The cartridge was 4KB in size, and the beta version of the game, after three months of labour and two screens complete, came in at around 6KB. | was over by 2KB. Bigger cartridges were available, but Coleco made the financial decision not to go for an 8KB cartridge, despite my recommendation and pleading. So, rather than having an extra 2KB to play with and add more screens, | had to spend the last month crunching out 2KB just to make the two screens

fit in a 4KB cartridge. The second

factor was the schedule. There

was no time left. The other screens

shape. It is not dented, warped, or Swiss- cheesed. The control panel overlay is in

decent condition, though it has a

hole worn in it at the front. | have

a new overlay for it that | found on

videogame developers who knew how to program the Atari 2600.

| had the knowledge as | had reverse-engineered the platform the previous year. My brother Steve owned an engineering company and he had a relationship with an executive at Coleco — | believe his name was Eric Bromley. Steve got

would have been impossible on the allowed schedule.

| got a very, very tiny slice. Enough to make it worthwhile, but |

eBay about a year ago. | will install

it when | restore the machine cosmetically. Regarding the

joysticks, which are Seimitsu/SNK

LS-30s, one of them was new

when | got the machine, while the

other has moderate wear.

a COIN MECH The coin mechanisms are original. | decided to paint the

coin door and :

leave the coin entry wear marks for authenticity's sake.

the Donkey Kong contract with Coleco and subcontracted the project to me. It’s all about relationships.

No, nothing. My only source was the actual arcade game. | had direct access to a machine, which Coleco provided, but | didn’t get to keep it!

| wanted the 2600 version to look just like the arcade game, but there was a technical problem. The Atari hardware did not have enough memory to display a full bitmap background — the background memory only held enough bits to cover half the screen, so the video display driver would display either a repeating pattern or a reflecting pattern. With this limitation you could not display the slanted ramps that were such an important aspect of the look of the game. This frustrated me until | came up with a technical solution to overcome the limitation, allowing for slanted ramps. It required a rewrite of much of the code but | think it was worth it.

certainly didn’t get rich off it.

Not to pat myself on the back, but | still love the game. | thought it turned out pretty well. From

my perspective | focused on the quality of the game experience that was in the cartridge rather

i tar-TaM clan Ualeiare maar -Mi-(el mar) mated eal (NZRU G) missing. | really wanted to get the iconic first level, with Mario jumping over barrels, to feel as close to the arcade game as possible, and I’m comfortable with how that turned out.

The importance of the iPhone cannot be overstated. The single most important thing it

has done is change the buying habits of the videogame consumer. Two years ago my eight- year-old son would ask me for a $30 cartridge for his Nintendo DS. Today he asks me if it’s okay to download a $0.99 iPhone game, and he’s equally satisfied with the experience. Apple has taught the consumer that good games can be had for under $2 and the games industry will never be the same. The genie is out of the box and the industry will never get it back in.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 35

The conversions

HIGH SCORE

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(DESL MVE SIOM) That Stuart Campbell awarded it the prestigious accolade of best 8-bit arcade conversion of all time back in issue 76 should be a big indicator of how good this version plays. Featuring big,

bright colourful visuals, faithful gameplay, and

all four stages, it’s a nigh-on perfect conversion for Lord Sugar’s unfairly mocked wonder

machine, which is

why we're awarding

it best conversion.

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This is a poor conversion, even by Atari 2600 standards. It's missing two stages (Cement Factory and Spring), DK looks like a deranged gingerbread man, the barrels look like cookies, and the behaviour of the enemy flame sprites

— they simply yo-yo from one end of the screen to the other — is easy to circumvent. The controls aren't great either.

UlTt

Poor graphics aside,

36 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

the intensity at which Kong lobs his barrels is relentless, and coupled with Mario's weedy jump is a perfect recipe for irritation. In this version it also takes Mario an unnecessarily long time to climb ladders — although this might have something to do with the giant arse that Sentient Software has retrofitted him with, only visible when he's climbing ladders.

i. C64 (Atarisoft) This superb version by Douglas D Dragin

is another great port. Released in 1983, it's the first official port to include all the stages — impressive considering it was one

of the earliest titles for the C64, and subsequent ports on machines boasting far more tech managed just three. With great presentation, and the option to tweak the difficulty of the game, this is generally the more popular of the two C64 versions that saw release.

LO

As well as the great

Atarisoft offering, C64 owners received this equally impressive one by Arcana, which also did the CPC version. Featuring all four stages — although this time it's worth noting that they follow the original Japanese level order — great sounds, smooth gameplay and all the cut-scenes, it’s another great conversion.

NIEC

As you would expect being on the NES, and from Nintendo, this is a great conversion. The

visuals look authentic, and the gameplay and controls are solid. It's missing the Cement Factory stage and the sounds and music differ from the arcade version. This is the most popular of all the home conversions, which is why the cart stayed in production for a staggering five years.

7. Avole ||

7. Apple Ii Despite no Cement Factory, this conversion still offers an authentic game of DK, delivering some of the more trivial

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elements of its arcade parent — such as the ‘how high can you get’ intro screen and the inclusion of Pauline’s girly possessions —at the price of good graphics and sounds. It's the nippiest conversion

of the game out there, and one of a handful to allow players to tweak

the difficulty.

. ColecoVision Once again no Cement Factory stage, but nonetheless a decent effort that looks and plays well. Unfortunately

its controls let it down, though this has more to do with the inaccurate nature of the console’s disc-stick controller than anything else. Coleco also released a version for its Coleco Adam computer. It doesn’t look as good as the console port, but it does include all four stages.

D9. VIC-20

The graphics are below par, and the game isn’t very smooth, but it’s not all bad news: the game sounds fantastic, and,

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amazingly, features all four stages, which is really quite unbelievable. This is as good a job as Atarisoft could be expected to muster up on the modest tech. Taking this into account, this is another decent conversion of DK.

Biggest surprise of the night, though, goes to this fantastic conversion for the TI-99/4A. While the visuals look a little washed out, and the sound effects are painful, the sprites do look nicely detailed and

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the game is the complete package featuring all four levels from the arcade game in the US order. The gameplay is nice

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great conversion.

. Atari 800 Without doubt the best version to be found on an Atari machine, and was another of a disproportionate number to include all four stages. There are slight differences to the arcade original that only astute Donkey Kong fans will

a

pick up on, but most will see this as a good-looking and complete port that certainly puts the dismal 2600 effort to shame.

Unsurprisingly, the MSX conversion, which was also by Sentient Software, suffers from the same issues that plague its similar Spectrum port

— namely it doesn't look great and Donkey Kong seems to be working himself into an early grave at the top of the screen. This is probably the worst

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of all the conversions published by Ocean.

Mario looks like Q*bert

in dungarees, Donkey Kong like Swamp Thing, and Pauline like an orange dinosaur. It only features two stages and it controls like a dead body. It’s rumoured that this version, developed by Coleco, was so bad that, upon seeing it, Mattel thought the company was trying to sabotage its machine. We can believe it.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 37

GAME CHANGERS

SUPER MARIO BROS

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r RELEASED: 1985 PUBLISHER: NINTENDO DEVELOPER: NINTENDO R&D4 SYSTEM: NES/FAMICOM

= The sequel to Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros popularised the

i . . . zig side-scrolling platformer and added multiplayer to what became Nintendo's flagship title T 71 al -”™ riginating as a coin-operated game back in 1985, has since seen many contenders attempt to knock Mario off his Super Mario Bros eventually became synonymous pedestal atop the platforming throne. Few have come close, none with the NES - establishing itself as a killer app for have succeeded, and the superiority of Super Mario Bros comes the Eighties console. The platformer was a spiritual down to one aspect: its mechanics. successor to Mario Bros — a game that attracted a fair share of Oddly, in a world of moustachioed plumbers, lizard-dragons and attention in its own right — but in adding the Super prefix (a trope Shy Guys, Super Mario Bros is defined by its realistic mechanics. that would come to define Nintendo sequels and spin-offs), the For an 8-bit game, the momentum and subtlety behind Mario and developer managed to create a game that would come to define the Luigi’s movements was incredibly deft, operating on a system that platform genre outright. you could understand from the first time you picked up the pad, The game is not only a classic — generating a buzz on its Japanese —_ yet would probably never master. The physics were analogous to and Western releases through, mostly, the rare gift of positive real life; if you wanted to attempt a large jump, you'd have to get a word of mouth — but it also stands up to the test of time. The game running start. Conversely, if you started Mario off on a run (which remains a relevant and valid example of platforming done well; Super | was wonderfully animated with his stodgy little hands pumping up We Mario Bros popularised the side-scrolling platformer, and the genre and down at his sides), you'd have to give him a margin of space to

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come to a stop in. Critics of the game called the mechanics slippery, KEY

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and his bizarre world indefinitely — who fell in love with the peculiar ede momentum Mario popularised. The bounciness of Mario's world also appealed to those first eS Talal) coming into gaming proper — jump on an enemy, and you'll have . eee is the second to fine-tune your landing. It wasn’t a matter of simply killing your : best-selling game WELCOME TO WARP 7ONE? enemies; that was only half of the battle. The game took full ae) 1 aa eT) :

advantage of this, introducing an eclectic cast of villains that took = a 40.24 million full advantage of the seemingly limited scope that Mario had in Pate) (Eee tol gs] his movements. Some would require tackling from above, some : — behind Wii avoiding altogether, some only vulnerable at certain times. The ; Sports’ ridiculous = 82.45 million SMB d h I : sales. (The fact the opene up a Wi oO e : top two spots are PCR AN nul:

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i. = Super Mario Bros has gone on to become a popular one with speed runners). On top move-set designs a Coats Tara) of that, there was even a slew of secret levels tucked into various Phe em tL nooks and crannies of the various worlds, wresting you out of your power-ups — hidden in boxes that could be completely missed, if you = composer Koji comfort zone and throwing you into a bonus round of whacked-out weren't attentive enough — were sparse enough to keep the game : Lele TT Ru weirdness. Nintendo's game is one that really rewards exploration challenging, but occurred often enough to always be fun, always : tempo of the six and its tight design still holds up brilliantly today. It was all part of the worth getting. The game’s level of challenge was perfectly attuned, Pg TUE Tol formula that would come to define Mario and his erstwhile franchise, suitable for all ages and never too easy or too hard for any party to Pe and it was all operating at 100 per cent efficiency from the start.

take issue with: the bosses, too, each required dexterity and reflexes PCC Rut) Everything you'll play in a platforming game of any type nowadays

to overcome, pushing the simple A, B, and D-pad of the NES to its PCE RL inevitably owes a nod to Super Mario Bros, and it's awe-inspiring

feasible limit without ever becoming pad-breakingly frustrating. : quick pace of play to think about just how solidly Nintendo's seminal side-scroller The enemies were complemented with level design that made : established the genre.

the most of the tight physics, too. The need to constantly alter - 7 ata all

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overground worlds that had high and wide platforms, forming paths Maelo . .

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into the clouds that felt wondrous and unique. The need to tune your position on-screen as you fell, and delicately press Jump’ for differential heights, was played upon in the tighter, much more claustrophobic underground sections, too.

Both overground and underground sections were augmented by destructible environments that could throw a curve ball into the mix at any time, plopping you back on a lower level and interrupting your masterplan for completing the level in record time (the game

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THE BEST

HACKS

The great thing about games as simply constructed as Super Mario Bros is that they are easier to reverse engineer than their modern- day counterparts. This leads to some great custom games seeping into the public domain — Super Mario Bros is famous for having a vast array of hacked versions, so we compiled our favourites for your reading pleasure

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A minefield of invisible blocks and obstacles impede your progress through every A hack that adds new maps, new graphics, new enemies and new power-ups single level of this fiendish re-creation of Super Mario Bros. We played a few levels to the game, Extra Mario Bros sometimes doesn't hit the Mario template one-for- of it, and will happily say it’s harder than Dark Souls. lf you don't believe us, take the one, but it’s worth playing through just to get to the final boss battle. It’s quite a challenge yourself - you'll soon understand why we said it. stretch from what you'll be used to seeing in Mario games, but it’s worth a play.

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SUPER MUSHROOM

@ Replacing Mario with Toad, Super Mushroom sees power-ups replaced with enemies, new sound effects added for jumping and some reworked graphics and textures. The game is apparently at a'99.9%’ difficulty level and is considered one of the hardest SMB hacks made.

THE NEW STRANGE MARIO BROS

@ Intentionally glitchy and oddly designed levels are the trademark of The

New Strange Mario Bros, a game that gets harder as it goes on. Infamous for incorporating new graphics that messed around with how the physics of the games worked, The New Strange Mario Bros really was the experience it promised.

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LUIGI’S FIRST QUEST: THE SEARCH FOR MARIO

@ Roles have been reversed, and it’s Luigi's time to shine in this interesting hack that places the lankier, greener brother in the shoes of his stodgy younger brother. The hack includes a slew of new levels that take advantage of Luigi’s higher jumping prowess.

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SUPREME ICE BROS

@ A hack that sees the fire power-up of Mario's replaced with an ice-based attack, Supreme Ice Bros also replaces Goombas with ninjas (who receive a speed boost), sees Bowser become the devil, hidden paths in pre-existing levels and completely remade music. It’s stupidly hard, too.

HELLO KITTY IN THE MUSHROOM KINGDOM

@ This bizarre hack takes the sprites from the Japanese NES game Hello Kitty World and uses them to replace the eponymous Bros of the original title. Even

coming with its own story, the hack is the result of a lot of effort, and actually a surprisingly good game.

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JOE & MOE PIZZA DELIVERY

@ Probably riffing on the inherent stereotype-bashing inherent to Mario, Joe & Moe replaces the majority of the graphics in Super Mario Bros and replaces them with the creator’s own take on the Mushroom Kingdom. The levels have been redesigned, too, but not to a particularly high standard.

As with other Nintendo games, it’s a piece of people’s childhoods. Anyone who grew up owning a

NES remembers it fondly

> = oe 7 . -" _ ~~ ULTIMATE GUIDE: DUCK HUNT

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Starring a smarmy dog and scores of hapless flying wildfowl, Duck Hunt was the game that introduced many to the joys of the NES Zapper lightgun. Mike Bevan looks back at the history and enduring appeal of Nintendo's virtual hunting trip

Cae eee Meats MW Mme ecm il Hunt, for one simple reason - it was paired on a pack-in cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System along with one of the most popular and groundbreaking console games of all time, Super Mario Bros. But while Shigeru Miyamoto’s platform classic was undoubtedly the more attention- grabbing title of the compilation, Duck Hunt retains the endearing nostalgia of childhood, a cartoon shooting gallery with a sniggering canine companion and the hapless quacks of animated flapping ducks brought down by the simple act of pulling a plastic trigger. The

grinning face of Duck Hunt's lovable dog, fresh from rooting around in bushes for nesting gun-fodder, has become an ironic and humorous hallmark for videogaming disappointment after missing your quarry in Nintendo’s lightgun shooter. And 30 years on, he’s set to make a comeback in the latest instalment of the Super Smash Bros fighting

game franchise with a feathered friend in tow. It seems all these years later, the ducks are striking back.

Although most people may know Duck Hunt from the Super Mario Bros compilation cart, it was in fact the debut pack-in title for the North American NES launch in 1985, when it came bundled with Gyromite, a platform game that worked with Nintendo’s Johnny Five-alike robot R.O.B. Coupled with its later appearance as a pack-in for various NES bundles alongside Super Mario Bros and World Class Track Meet, that’s an awful lot of copies of Duck Hunt out in the wild.

Produced by renowned Nintendo designer Gunpei Yokoi, creator of the Game & Watch and Game Boy handheld systems, Duck Hunt was in fact a digital reincarnation of his earlier electromechanical toy, a Kosenja (‘light ray gun’) game of the same name. Released in 1976, the product used a small mirror-projection device to project white duck silhouettes onto a wall. The ducks would ‘fall’, accompanied by aloud quack, }>

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when the player hit them with the shotgun-shaped lightgun provided. In fact, despite the absence of a pastoral background or your ubiquitous hunting dog, the basic game mechanics were very similar to the future NES version. However, the relatively high retail price of 9,500 yen (around £75 adjusted for inflation) meant it was an expensive novelty back in Seventies Japan. The version of Duck Hunt that most of us are familiar with was launched on the Japanese Famicom console in April, 1984. It was one of three initial titles for Nintendo’s new Famicom Beam Gun peripheral, along

with the Wild West-themed Wild Gunman, and the police-training style shooter Hogan’s Alley. In North America a version of the game was released for Nintendo's VS arcade system the same year, prior to its home release in 1985. Former Nintendo market-research analyst Jerry Momoda remembers Vs Duck Hunt well. “VS System games were an inexpensive two-chip update [of existing Famicom titles] with new cabinet graphics,” he says. “They were a welcome alternative for operators who had plenty of old cabinets. Operators could quickly change games on location with little downtime, and keep locations fresh with new titles. The VS

ULTIMATE GUIDE: DUCK HUNT

PERIPHERAL FAITHFULHOUNDS VISION More videogames eon doggy heroes

Other games featuring notable or peculiar hardware add-ons

GYROMITE Nes

w Aka Robot Gyro, it was designed for use with the Robotic Operating Buddy (R.0.B.)

STAR PAWS VARIOUS

SAM & MAX = =PARAPPATHE OKAMI HITTHE ROAD RAPPER VARIOUS

for NES. It's a two-player puzzle platform @ Based on an @ Released in aid of PC DOS PLAYSTATION @ Okamiputs you into

game, the second player using R.0.B. abandoned concept the BBC's Comic Relief This was the first @ Wonderfully quirky and the paws of a snow-white

to move on-screen gates and pillars by that was dreamt up by charity, this game saw outing for Steve Purcell's unmistakably Japanese, —_ wolf called Amaterasu,

manipulating a pair of gyroscopic spinning tops. Manic Miner creator players controlling Ralph unlikely detectiveduo-a Parappaintroduced us tasked with exploring Matthew Smith, Star the dog and protecting six-foot fedora-wearing to the peculiar tale of a a watercolour-like

MARIO CLASH virTuAL Boy Pawsresembledasort of his sleepwalking master. dogandahyperkinetic funkypaper-thincanine, medieval Japan. You'll

mw Amazingly, there were no proper Mario Road Runnerin space. As Ralph had to neutralise ‘rabbity-thing’. It's an his sunflower girlfriend, | need to master the

games on Nintendo's failed console. What Captain Roger Pawstrong various hazards in his all-American road trip and a karate-practising game's innovative ‘brush

there was, however, was this fun effort ee it was your job to capture owner's path as he involving robot scientists, onion, among other stroke’ techniques

that has Mario flinging shells at enemies delicious but fiendishly careeredever-onwards, afrozenBigfootandthe things. Aprecursor tothe to solve puzzles and

on distant ledges while avoiding enemies wary Space Griffinsand — takingcarenotto wake —_ world’s biggest ball of many popular rhythm- strike down enemies,

and hazards found on his own platform. dispatch them to Earth. him up. It also featured twine, and formed the based games that while colouring in the The C64 version featured small cameos from basis for TelltaleGames’ followed, it also spawned _ beautifully dreamlike

YOSHI'S SAFARI snes a great soundtrack by comedians Lenny Henry modernepisodicseries | aguitar-focusedsequel | gameworld resembling a

@ One of the few fun times to be had with composer Rob Hubbard. — and Harry Enfield. of adventures. UmJammer Lammy. children’s drawing book.

Nintendo's clunky Super Scope lightgun,

it's an odd hybrid that sees you trundling

along a highway blasting Bowsers

minions, jumping obstacles and fighting ridiculous-looking bosses.

RESIDENT EVIL 4 various

@ For its survival-horror masterpiece, Capcom released a bloody-looking chainsaw-style controller. The PS2 version even made little revving noises as you ran around decapitating zombies. Sadly, the shape of the controller was a bit awkward.

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OUT RUN 3D master system ‘ at ade Caw es @ While Space Harrier deserves a ” 3 mention, we're actually going to go with Out Run 3D. The animation is a little choppy at time, but the impressive visuals

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for it. Highly recommended.

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System and PlayChoice were very successful alternated between duck and skeet shooting and Nintendo's last official coin-op games. Our rounds. And, as perhaps could be deduced guns were imported from Japan. The first from the cabinet marquee, which depicted Duck version was black in colour and looked like a .357 Hunt dog cowering from a hail of bullets, it was Magnum, so much that it was too realistic for possible to shoot more than just the ducks. There American street locations and could be mistaken was an added bonus round in which our canine for a real gun. They were made of pliable rubber pal popped up among the feathered targets and over a metal core, and as such didn’t last long in could be blasted by ‘mistake’, a misdemeanour American arcades...” for which he'd rightfully scold you at the end of While the arcade version of Duck Hunt was for the segment. To the future disappointment of the most part very similar to the console release, many a NES Duck Hunt player that longed to zap there were a couple of notable differences. The that annoying grin off the mickey-taking hound, cabinet was set up with a couple of lightguns this little Easter Egg was unfortunately nowhere with players taking turns to play, and the game to be seen in the console version. While 4

JERRY MOMODA TWEETY BIRDS

At Nintendo of America in the Eighties, Jerry helped to Ten more videogames starring various feathered friends

test and promote new arcade and console products

What’s your personal history with the console and arcade versions of Duck Hunt?

| was hired by Nintendo in 1982, and was fortunate

to be the one to communicate with Japan on games in development. No one wanted to touch the console industry in America after the crash of 1983. The VS [Arcade] System served as a bridge leading up to the North American NES release in 1985. Both Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley were first released for the coin-op VS System in 1984. The VS System was simply a coin-operated version of the Japanese Famicom console.

Was the arcade version of Duck Hunt as popular as the home version?

It was designed to be a Famicom/NES title, from the simplicity of gameplay

and the graphics. Duck Hunt was bundled along with Super Mario Bros in = CU some configurations of the NES console, so it reached way more players. It’s

a better fit for the console player base. Duck Hunt and Hogan’s Alley both Co had instant but not long-lasting appeal in arcades.

And in the arcade version you could actually shoot that pesky dog?!

Everyone wanted to shoot [it] because it mocked players. And so it played a an antagonist role as it taunted players by laughing at them. For obvious i reasons, being able to shoot the dog was removed from the NES version.

This was designed to be good, clean, family fun — a Nintendo trademark. a wy @ In Hogan’s Alley, shooting people (though animated) probably affected

its marketability. bere

How important do you think the cartoon-like graphics were in =

drawing people in? In the home market | think it had a lot of appeal. For the players it targeted, cartoon-like graphics had a strong appeal. The warm, vibrant colours used

. in Duck Hunt gave it a whole different feel than games like Hogan's Alley. Naturally, parents don’t mind as much if little Johnny is going cartoon duck i hunting versus shooting at humans in a realistic war, zombie, crime or I space game.

Why do you think Duck Hunt is still so fondly remembered today? As with other Nintendo games, it’s a piece of people’s childhood. Anyone

I who grew up owning a NES remembers this game fondly. Being a pack-in, i nearly everybody owned the game. It’s a conversation piece that people can a . . I share. The same way they talk about Super Mario Bros... . 4 a > Nintendo was happy enough to let as shoot oo second. The Zapper detected this change in i at defensive poultry, discharging virtual slugs intensity of light along with whether you were

i at the family pet was it seems a step too far for ret * OOOOOPTS. near enough centred on the boxes to score a domestic duck-hunters. 10 w hit on a duck. And that’s why when you played For the Western release of the NES lightgun, st Duck Hunt you'd occasionally sense the odd

the famous Zapper, the Dirty Harry-style OUCH # flickering effect, although it wasn’t annoying Japanese Beam Gun was remodelled as a SHOOT THE DUCKS, NOT ME # enough to spoil the fun. The way the Zapper futuristic, and somewhat less realistic virtual worked also meant that pointing it at a light- weapon. Inside the Zapper was a simple sensor aah PST TRC. SDE A obulb wouldn't do you any good if you wanted which responded to changes in luminosity on : i ; ie ih : 4 to cheat, although sticking it right up near the the screen. In Duck Hunt and other Nintendo ; t { f screen might have helped, if kind of defying Zapper titles, pulling the trigger caused the Lapa as : — the point of the game. The timing issues of the screen to black out and display white boxes ecu Rta . Zapper hardware unfortunately means that Duck around the targets, just for a fraction of a : Pena UT OLS Le : : Hunt won't work on modern LCD TVs.

—

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Duck Hunt comes with three different modes — game A gives you three bullets per duck to shoot at ten targets that rise consecutively from the thicket, the trickier game B gives you the same number of bullets to tackle two ducks flying up at a time, while game C substitutes clay pigeons for wildfowl. Game A also gives you an option for a second player to control the flight path of the ducks in a bid to put off player one, which can lead to a few hearty chuckles. Each mode continues at an increasing difficulty level until players reach round 99, when the game resets to a bugged round 0, featuring spectral ducks that are impossible to hit, echoing Pac-Man’s famous

‘kill screen’. Another interesting fact about Duck Hunt is that its character designer (and the artist behind that famous doggy), Hiroji Kiyotake, went on to create Samus Aran of Metroid fame.

And in the latest instalment of Super Smash Bros, the snickering mutt is back on Nintendo’s latest console, after being on the videogame

‘bench’ for 30 years. He comes complete with a duck on his back, and special moves that pay homage to other Zapper games including Wild Gunman and Hogan’s Alley. You might not have been able to hit him with your Zapper back in the day on the NES, but now at least you might be able to slap him about a little bit. 9

ULTIMATE GUIDE: DUCK HUNT

1 I b

, : ,

Instant Expert

is the most

non-linear adventure in the series. You can tackle the dungeons in almost any order you like, and the game can be finished without ever collecting the sword.

was the

first NES title to sell over a million copies and went on to sell 6.5 million in total.

for Zelda's

third dungeon resembles a

Nazi swastika, it is actually the much more innocuous manji, an ancient religious symbol used by Japanese Buddhists, which

is the reverse of the infamous emblem and is common in Eastern philosophy.

unusual hero in that,

in the first game and canonically throughout the series, he is left- handed. Perhaps by coincidence, the word ‘links’ is German for ‘left.

and you can play a second quest with different dungeon layouts and item placements. If you want to skip straight to it, enter your name as ‘ZELDA at the start.

is named after Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

in the US

and Europe it was ported from disk to cartridge and became the first console game to include a battery to store save data.

48 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

Ashley Day argues that Nintendo's seminal

= ULTIMATE GUIDE:

i ij

adventure game isn't just an important piece of ¥

history but a game that’s still great to play today. *

Discover one of Nintendo's greatest adventures

ou really have to hand it to Miyamoto and his band at Nintendo. To make one of the greatest and most important videogames of all time, in the shape of Super Mario Bros, was one thing. But to repeat the same trick just a year later, and in a completely different style of genre, is rather incredible.

In fact, there isn’t even a year between Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda. There was only five months between the Japanese release dates of each game, yet the latter represents a giant stride from the former in terms of game design. Where Mario was brilliantly simple, placing you at the start of a linear journey and merely asking you to move a little plumber to the right, Zelda offered a world of possibility by comparison.

Starting off in the middle of the vast land of Hyrule, it put you in control of a left-handed elf-like boy named Link, with three possible exits standing before him, and then... did nothing.

No instructions, no dialogue, no hints. Just the promise of adventure and an invitation into the unknown. Which way should you go? Well that was entirely up to you, and that was the entire point of the game. There was an ultimate goal, of course — to collect the eight scattered pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom in order to defeat the evil Ganon and rescue the eponymous Princess Zelda — but it was the open nature of how you approached this task that really made The Legend Of Zelda so compelling. It's a well-known story that Miyamoto’s inspiration for Zelda came from his childhood memories of exploring the Japanese countryside without a map and the pleasure that he got from discovering places he had no previous knowledge of. The goal of the Zelda project was to capture that childlike fascination with the unknown, the sense of wonder that the world can provoke when everything around you is so new and unusual. And that project also happened to fortuitously coincide

with the development of the Famicom Disk System, Nintendo's Famicom add- on that side-stepped the rising cost of ROM chips and allowed developers to create much bigger games than before.

The Disk System's rewritable media also allowed for game progress to be permanently saved without the need for cumbersome passwords, and this was a crucial technological advantage that allowed Nintendo to further distinguish its console games from those of the arcades. Coin-operated arcade games were still the dominant form of videogaming in 1986 and were focused very much on short-term challenge, cyclical and repetitive gameplay, and the thrill of chasing a high score. But Nintendo wanted its games to be something different; something you played over a long period of time, returning to like a good book to enjoy an ever-evolving experience; a journey, rather than the same few seconds over and over again.

This is very much how the modern videogame can be described 25 years

ULTIMATE GUIDE: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

Some of Zelda’s familiar characters make their debuts

Pixel Perfect

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 49

Critical Reception

What the gaming

“The Legend Of Zelda is a massive arcade adventure packed full of dragons, imprisoned princesses, traps and pitfalls”

- COMPUTER & VIDEO GAMES, 1987

‘Twin Galaxies Se High Scores

@ NAME: RODRIGO LOPES @ TIME: 00:31:37

44

@ NAME: RODRIGO LOPES @ TIME: 00:39:59

EXTREME CHALLENGE

(COMPLETE GAME WITHOUT SWORD, re as et sl 9)

@ NAME: MARLON D MORROW. @ COMPLETION: 100%

50 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

bE ULTIMATE GUIDE:

> on, of course, but The Legend Of Zelda was one of the first games to truly offer that kind of deep, long-term experience. And it did it very well indeed. So many early videogames can be credited as the first to do one thing or another, but Zelda did it all, establishing the rules of the modern adventure game and in such style that, alongside its sequels, it remains brilliantly playable a quarter of a century later, while Nintendo's competitors are still playing catch-up.

It's not just the tantalising nature

of Hyrule’s open world that makes Zelda so appealing. It's the way Link’s ever-increasing inventory and abilities open up new routes through that world, ensuring that it rewards progress with a steady stream of surprises and discoveries right up to the end. There's the contrast between the freedom of the overworld and the tightly focused structure of the dungeons beneath the ground. There's the way each weapon Link acquires has more than one obvious use, forcing you to experiment and be creative with the way you play. And, of course, there's the wealth of secrets that permeate the world, not just rewarding the player but encouraging them to dig deeper, play harder and uncover hidden treasures that make you feel like the best player in the world. It's a deeply personal feature that makes you feel special for finding those secrets and personalises the experience, even though those secrets are, in reality, accessible to everyone.

Power Ups

» More high explosives can never be a bad thing.

With 33 years under its belt, the Zelda series has since gone from strength to strength, and many people have a favourite entry in the series that isn't the first one. A Link To The Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina Of Time and Majora's Mask could all legitimately lay claim to the title of Greatest Zelda, but there’s something pure about that first game that sets it apart from its successors. Right from Zelda // onward, the series began to change.

It still retained the core features of an overworld, a series of dungeons and an expanding bag of tricks, but it also lost something along the way. As the series has become increasingly preoccupied with telling a story, you

I BET YOU'D LIKE TO HA¥YE MORE BOMBS.

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could argue that it has also limited itself, weighing its opening moments down with unnecessary dialogue and lengthy tutorials that actually distance you from Link instead of doing the opposite.

The Legend Of Zelda's real brilliance is that it has the confidence to just drop you into its world and leaves you to explore for yourself, experimenting with its mysteries and discovering secrets without any real hand-holding. Instead of simply telling you a story, it allows you to live the story; its events are driven by your decisions and actions. It feels unique, it rewards those who jump in at the deep end to go see what they can find, and it's a quality that the Zelda series would do well to recapture. ¥

Some of The Legend Of Zelda's pick-ups have endured throughout the series’ history, while it never quite happened for others...

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»Bait »Bombs »Boomerang »Bow »Candle »Ladder___»Magic Book This meat is The bomb can The boomerang Thebowisthe Thiscanbeused Thisitemallows An optional item bought from be used to hurt has two distinct only thing that to light your you to cross that upgrades the ashop and justaboutany uses. One violentto cankillGanon, — way, butit can small sections wand so that it can used to feed enemy butcan damage enemies; atleastonce alsobeusedto _ of river to take shoot fireballs, any Goriyas also be used the other practical, you've acquired —_ burn bushes, shortcuts and — making candles that block to open secret as it can retrieve the silver sometimes is essential for redundant. your path. entrances. distant objects. arrows forit. revealing secrets. some dungeons. i a, © § 7 hi o o£ poe ee »Magic » Potions »Raft »Rings » Shield » Swords »Whistle __Wand _ Potions come Allows Link These, much The wooden There are Asingle-use It's a wand! in two varieties: to get around like every other shield just three swords — item that is What more do blue and red. the waterways magic item, repels ordinary | Wooden, White essential we have to tell Blue restores of Hyrule. He can be found attacks. The and Magical - for beating you? Ituses your some of your can embark or in two colours. magic shield, each one more Digdogger, the magic energy to life while the red disembark the Eachincreases however, can powerful than boss of the shoot beams. _replenishesitall. raftatanydock. —_Link’s strength. _ block fireballs. the last. fifth dungeon.

Signature tune

The now-iconic Zelda theme slowly plays and builds up speed as a waterfall pours down

the title screen. Koji Kondo's composition is yet another classic, leading to his involvement in every game in the series up until Ocarina Of Time.

SS

Secret exit

Finding secrets is one of Zelda's greatest pleasures, not to mention one of its inspirations, and here's one of the earliest. A door without

a keyhole is opened by pushing a seemingly ordinary block to the left.

Side story

Some dungeon screens switch perspective to a side view, a trick that was adopted wholesale for Zelda Il; The Adventure Of Link and would return for some brief sequences in the Game Boy's Link's Awakening.

Boss hog

The final showdown with Ganon reveals

him to be some kind of grotesque demon

pig, much more monstrous than the human reinterpretation in Ocarina Of Time. Recent games tend to give him a hideous second form.

Memorable Moments

We present the best bits of the best NES game Nintendo ever made

Fairy godmother

Find an enclosed pool and a fairy will pop out and rejuvenate Link's health with a swirl of hearts. It's another feature that has cropped up time and again through the series, with the fairies’ abilities and applications expanding.

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Hard to swallow

The brilliant Dodongo boss is defeated by getting him to eat and swallow a bomb, causing him some nasty indigestion when it explodes in his belly. A similar boss, King Dodongo, became an iconic sequence in Ocarina Of Time.

Loud noises!

In the Japanese release of Zelda you can shout into the Famicom microphone to hurt Pols Voice enemies. But you can't in the NES release. So in Japan it's a memorable moment. Over here it's barely even a regular moment.

MASTER USING IT AND YOU CAN HAVE THIS.

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Good advice

One of the few pieces of dialogue is also the most memorable. Though you can play the whole game without the sword, the old man’s advice is right. You'll do much better with it, and what's a Zelda game without a sword?

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Triforce get!

Link finds his first piece of the Triforce and holds it above his head in a way that has now become an identifiable characteristic of the little elf boy. he Triforces of Wisdom and Power appear in the original, with Courage debuting in the next.

* cs

Hidden stairs

Another great secret. Touch a statue and it will come to life to attack you. Some statues stand over stairways that lead to secret underground rooms, tempting players to engage them in combat in the hope of some reward.

GRUMBLE. GRUMBLE. . .

Feeding time

This Goriya isn’t having a moan, it's actually his stomach rumbling. Feed him the meat and he'll let you pass. The first time a Zelda enemy defies expectations of simply being sword fodder and not the last.

ULTIMATE GUIDE: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 51

“ ULTIMATE GUIDE:

The Versions

Of Zelda ek ene) | oe

There have been many more

versions of the original Legend dl I L L a ra |

Of Zelda than you probably e

think. Here’s every one and the -

differences between them a | id

Pa | FAMICOM DISK re FE

SYSTEM (1986)

The first official release

of the game was titled

ae ages eee NoHo ROEM ean UCR om Famicom Disk System. This release used the extra capabilities in the FDS to play sounds not present in the NES cartridge version. It also used the microphone built in to the second controller of the Famicom. Leo tale Macon a Ie] og Tea a Ul) sound-sensitive Pols Nella AR ola) VEER laalal er] UV impossible on the SC laTeE gol atom

Le | ZELDA NO DENSETSU: TEIKYOU z | CHARUMERA (1986) Pr an | | Made to promote Myojo Foods’ a m | a charumera noodles, this special ll rae Me) mM ae lea lee aW Bees) Cin) game is identified by a different label design and is (e) E NINTENDO considered a rare Famicom collector's item, selling ENTERTAINMENT for around £180 in Japanese retro stores. o~ — , or . SYSTEM (1987) =a = As well as translating the _ once game into English, the US and European release of 7 eee he Poe eR ER UNA CRTs aoln eu aur eae Me RUNES See had been introduced to reduce the cost of Cn ela ule

Satellaview add-on between August 1995 and January 1997. As well as the advanced graphics, BS Zelda No Densetsu also made CMe) a Ul-Mar-lne | lee Bolel (ale Marla to provide a live narration throughout the broadcast quest.

De LEVEL — eee ree ee este Ld !

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ROMs, the add-on never made it outside Japan so Nintendo used a new type of chip. The MMC1 (Memory Management Controller) used bank-switching to make bigger games possible and allowed The Legend Of Zelda to be released worldwide. And boy did Nintendo milk it, releasing the game on a special gold cartridge and evita RMN Tia Tao aod ore Lec le] a1 2) so that everyone could see for themselves. Classy.

52 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

ULTIMATE GUIDE: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

GAMEBOY COLOR REMAKE (2000, cancelled)

ANIMALCROSSING (2001)

Both the Nintendo 64 and GameCube editions of Animal Crossing allowed players to enjoy a Tal mela SoM lua ea ULL edna oe The Legend Of Zelda was one of those games although, weirdly, it was buried in the code and couldn't be accessed without using cheat devices.

eae ene) cleo kes

Capcom negotiated a deal to develop six new Zelda titles for the Game Boy Color. Flagship worked on the remake for a year but encountered a number of problems. One was that the GBC’s resolution was too different to that of the NES, meaning the game { had to be redrawn to fit the more narrow Cth gidlgihlgld y Fyogt-1a Mal Rael R Ue Mee elle

to rebalance the game to make it less difficult.

Bau M EER) rl ace] 1-0 40100) i as Flagship changed direction. At Miyamoto's beh Comment ° i request, the studio started work on three Is_it_the missing Link? No. interlinked games in the ‘Triforce’ series, ENN esse) Cee tee esl) Ode me lal Mel e168) ke) gee Na idea proved too ambitious, however, and had to be downgraded to the two games that were eventually released: Oracle Of Ages and Oracle (oor reo CM Ma MLC eKe tel mela Mystical Seed Of Power, which was developed off the back of the remake project, and you

ee re one}

THE LEGEND Trt Gin iece vay bse soe Tale) OF ZELDA: Uae 0) Peele NA

COLLECTOR’S

EDITION (2003)

OW Tcelnatel olnr-10er- aa 00 ee ne officially sold but given away to Nintendo customers to promote the upcoming release OM CNL The disc includes emulated versions (psa melee tee) meek ecd and, of course, The tol Tee) ec loh which featured a

GWAC oR Ure of ed ” corrected some ff iN UM ca _/ = Meret Ss y- Mela eR \ as changing the Ue nt name of Gannon cite t ca ae om uvieg a ene Tas 3D CLASSICS EDITION (2012) When the 3DS was first shown off at E3 2010, one of the tech demos was a series of ‘Classic Games’ redrawn to take advantage VIRTUAL CONSOLE(2006) of the 3D display, and one of the games in that showreel was The Legend Of Zelda. Nintendo has since confirmed plans to sell downloadable ‘3D Classics’ through the 3DS's eShop service, Uae Cle PCL] ee erutsh Aes is “see is starting with 3D Excitebike. The Legend Of Zelda hasn't officially peer ee etree en been confirmed, but given that Ocarina Of Time has been remade

for the system, and that Shigeru Miyamoto has expressed interest in giving similar treatment to A Link To The Past, it's easy to assume that the original Zelda will appear in 3D pretty soon.

Uren WIR UIRO aeCelace)y service. Sadly, the European version ran in 50Hz as part of Nintendo's ludicrous policy of aaa Melia a ON RY elle lan leak lanl Ola remembers, despite the fact that it used the updated 2003 translation. It is now delisted.

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 53

aaa pushed the NES hardware and __ introduced a street-wise ~_ anthropomorphism that ae rel eat] goM (e-l0(-l ant g ee Rory Milne asks ex-Rare Sat CALM sre tose] eLel aT dds’ cl mae but a

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LPR eT meal Elie) arAl eae) tactical genius. He isn't PR eoe- aco ee-y tough as Pimple, but he’s good with gadgets — think James Bond with warts.

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so he must be doing something right.

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THE MAKING OF: BATTLETOADS

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BATTLETOADS HISTOR

A quick overview of the series.

How many have you played? BATTLETOADS BATTLETOADS & £4 BATTLETOADS NES 1991 DOUBLE DRAGON: IN RAGNAROK’S lt all began on the NES, THE ULTIMATE WORLD came Boy 1993

TEAM came Boy 1993 @ The Battletoads teamed up with the characters that inspired their creation for this sequel, and while it spanned several genres - much as its predecessor had done - the follow-up offered a few more sustained beat-'em-

of course, but the brawling, platforming and multi-genre stages of the Battletoads’ first demanding outing were ported to various other consoles as well as the Amiga.

BATTLETOADS GAME BOY 1991

@ Although released just after the NES original, Game Boy Battletoads was pretty much a completely different game. A few NES stages survived in adapted form, but the title essentially went its own way.

BATTLETOADS IN BATTLEMANIACS SNES 1993

@ Although an original game, Battlemaniacs was heavily inspired by aspects of the first Battletoads title. Its visuals, plot and bosses were new,

" however, and its gameplay was reworked to show off the Super Nintendo hardware.

up sequences.

» An actual rat race, as Rash races a ratty opponentto defuse a bomb.

P design and storyline. “We all worked together on that team on a day-to-day basis,” Kevin recalls, “but when it came to the game design and concepts for levels, that was really Tim and Mark. The game design was the first thing that was tried and tested. Story came afterwards. But once we had the first few levels rolling along and playing nicely, we continued to expand upon the story too. This story then gave us other ideas to work into the game, so we were soon developing the story and the game simultaneously.”

The structure the team had put in place allowed the Battletoads project to quickly gain momentum, and a game-defining decision was soon made on the title's difficulty. “Mark had developed some editors

challenging. | would often hear Mark scream when he was testing his own software if he failed to get past his own levels, but | don’t think he made it too hard. | guess we just wanted value for money, and for the game to last. We'd always try to vary the levels so that you got a break from one particular style or genre within the game. It made it more refreshing to play over periods of time and a lot more challenging in general.

DEVELOPER HIGHLIGHTS

DONKEY KONG

for creating levels, and | think The story would often help to play a COUNTRY cricturep) that Tim worked with him part in creating those subgenres and SYSTEM:

: tH oa VARIOUS on putting those together, added to the variation. | remember YEAR: 1994 notes Kevin, “| remember watching Tim draw all of the sections = [7

: i : GOLDENEYE 007

that a lot of work went into of the Dark Queen’s tower, which SYSTEM: N64 making it seriously hard Mark cleverly animated to achieve YEAR: 1997 and precise. Some of it was the 3D effect. It worked really well, BANJO-KAZOOIE crazy hard but that's the way and | learned a lot of tricks from Tim SYSTEM: N64 it was intended to be; extremely by watching him create those kinds of YEAR: 1998

56 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

@ Confusingly, this impressive system exclusive delivered exactly what might have

been expected of Game Boy Battletoads — a stripped down version of the NES original with graphical concessions and fewer levels and bosses.

BATTLETOADS ARCADE 1994 § Battletoads undeservedly flopped at the arcades, f, despite being a high-quality

¥ scrolling fighter that refined the franchise's formula. The coin-op is predictably the best-looking Battletoads title released and favours brawling over other genres.

effects. | thought it looked amazing when | saw it working.”

As Battletoads’ visuals, design and gameplay evolved, another equally important aspect of the game was addressed — one that required an additional team member, as Kevin recollects. “My friend Dave Wise would come up with new music for each level — as far as | remember, that was pretty much the way it went for most games.

The levels didn't really come to life until

we had music and effects. | remember always looking forward to Dave appearing with a new disc that held the music to the next level. Once that was incorporated

we'd sometimes switch the odd level

music around to a different level, because sometimes tunes felt right on other levels. But usually, Dave would go away after looking at a level's graphics and a brief demo of the gameplay, and then he'd write a piece for the level. A lot of the sound effects were created by Mark — using some software he created to generate sounds.”

©

erious hours were being put in to Battletoads and the team’s collective efforts were reaching fruition, and so work was started on the title's. box art, but thought was also being given to documenting the game’s visuals for future reference and to help with the marketing of the game. “| designed the box artwork, but Tim airbrushed and produced it.” Kevin reveals, “It was the second design. | did one with the three toads on the front up-close, but it went off to focus groups and it didn't grab the kids’ attention, so we did a redesign. | inked up a picture, and as Tim was so good

with the airbrush he did a fantastic job of

the one we ended up with. We also made

a style guide containing all of the characters within the game, we wanted as much of the concept illustrated on paper as possible. The style guides were used for reference when working with Nintendo. Putting them together also allowed us to present visually to the companies that became involved in marketing. | was busy working on the style guide and some of the other graphics for the game, but | wouldn't say that | spent anywhere near as many hours working on the game as Mark did. As usual, he practically lived at Rare when he worked on the game and got really into the thick of it.”

Of course, before marketing Battletoads, the task of in-house testing the finished product remained, with the general feeling at Rare being that they had produced a title that was tough but fair. “I think Mark always wanted it to be difficult,” Kevin admits, “It was never impossible, but always just required practice and of course some skill. The NES controllers were bulletproof little pads that were actually really responsive and could take some serious shit, but the game was tested on many controllers to make sure it was possible to play right, and it was, but you had to put in the practice. As a fighting game

)e, these icy spheres

enthusiast | preferred the brawling levels. | could never complete it, but then there's nothing worse than a game that is too easy!”

On its release, the idea that Battletoads might be too easy was either skilfully concealed in the glowing reviews that the game received or, far more likely, was simply not considered. Just as importantly, the impressive sales that the title enjoyed confirmed that NES gamers’ appreciation for Battletoads matched the fevered enthusiasm shown by the videogames press. Further games in the series were now a formality, but Battletoads would also have a second less obvious legacy. “ Battletoads became a template in some way,” Kevin reasons, “perhaps Battletoads, when you think about it, was a changing point for Rare, and a lot of the game's elements echo throughout many of the company’s later titles. Eventually it became kind of a trademark | guess, and future Rare games were often varied in the same kind of way as Battletoads.”

Battletoads may be far from a template for Rare's current output, but like many gamers, Kevin feels that the seminal scrolling brawler stands up against anything that Rare or anyone else was producing at the time. “Most of the games we produced were top quality,” Kevin beams, “some titles were stronger than others, but we learned as the company grew about what people wanted in a game. We always, always tried to make sure they were just fun to play, and that they would give a challenge to anyone who picked them up. When | see Battletoads, | see a lot of game rammed into that NES cart, and compared to a lot of the other games that were out at the time it offered a lot more. It looked great, sounded and played fantastic and it set the path for more Battletoads games, which proved its success. It’s definitely one I’m proud of being a part of.” ¥

Many thanks to Kevin Bayliss for making this article possible.

pM:

ANTHROPOMORPHIC FIGHTERS

Other animals with distinctly un-animal-like behaviour

MIYAMOTO USAGI

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tM reg--1 ean M Ol elt) aby] Clune Ol-t-[e appears in Dark Horse Comics’ Usagi Yojimbo - which

translates as “rabbit bodyguard”, Usagi is a ronin who Oe ee nee) ROR leee lees] (ee ule me st 1 Software skilfully adapted Usagi for the C64 in Samurai Taner di Cole e-Te Colne on) Uke

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SPECIES: Turtle

MEMORABLE APPEARANCE:

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PRINCE LEON

SPECIES: Lion

MEMORABLE APPEARANCE:

ETUC ele ema ne 10

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COLD SHADOW SPECIES: Duck

MEMORABLE APPEARANCE: Maui Mallard In Cold Shadow

@ Donald Duck used to moonlight as a detective/ninja. No, seriously, there was even a combat platformer called Maui Mallard In Cold Shadow where Maui Mallard was Donald's hapless detective cover for a ninja persona - Cold Shadow. 16-bit Disney titles typically impressed, and Cold Shadow's OCs ela len

© PSYCHO FOX

0 Slee MEMORABLE APPEARANCE:

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>.

TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 57

“ ULTIMATE GUIDE:

sUPER MARIO Ros

Many consider Mario's third NES adventure to be one of

his greatest. Join Ashley Day

as he makes a case for why [mf those fans are probably still correct

Instant Expert

Prior to its release, Super Mario Bros 3 was revealed to the public through a canny piece of product placement in Hollywood

movie The Wizard.

At one stage in development Nintendo considered a centaur suit for Mario. This was later dropped in favour of the raccoon suit.

Although the Koopalings are all named after celebrities, their appearances were based upon seven of the programmers working under Shigeru Miyamoto.

At 17 million copies sold, Super Mario Bros 3 remains one of the bestselling non-bundle games ever released. The Virtual Console version and the GBA release have sold a further 1 million and

5 million copies respectively.

The idea of Mario 3's ingenious overworld map was later used again, albeit in simplified form, in Super Mario World, and was more accurately copied in both New Super Mario Bros games.

Super Mario Bros 3 is one of only ten games to be preserved in the US Library of Congress's Game Canon initiative. It is the only Japanese game in the list.

The idea of different ‘suits’

for Mario to wear, rather

than simple power-ups, later resurfaced in Super Mario Galaxy's bee, boo and spring suits.

58 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

hether you were wealthy

enough to afford one \ ] \ } or not when it was first released, the NES was

undeniably a landmark turning point for videogames. After the primacy of the Atari 2600, the clumsy DIY feel of Spectrum and C64 games (which was perhaps understanding when you consider some of these games were made

by kids in their bedrooms), and

the daunting inaccessibility of the games found in arcades, Nintendo's unassuming grey box came along and changed everything with one simple rule: make games fun. Not every game Nintendo released or published was great, of course, but every game that Nintendo created was always easy to pick up and play, controlled with a confident slickness, presented a decent challenge without ever being unfair, and positioned the videogame as a wondrous window into another world, a world filled with a sense

of discovery and joy that some felt

a a a a a ag a a a a ag a HH

had been missing. NES games were what videogames should have been all along — it's just that nobody really realised until the day they were faced with them.

The crown jewel of this era is undoubtedly Super Mario Bros 3. While the two previous Mario games had been exceptional adventures when compared to those games available on other systems of the time, Super Mario Bros 3 was exceptional when compared to Nintendo's own achievements. It took the template laid out by the original Super Mario Bros and expanded it in every possible direction, resulting in a bigger, longer, deeper and even taller videogame.

Its seemingly never-ending wealth

of interactions epitomised the NES software catalogue and established the Mario series as something truly special in the world of videogames.

It might not have seemed like such a revolutionary game at first glance, since the opening few seconds were almost exactly the same as Super

BSD

Mario Bros. The player is put in control of a diminutive Mario, with a paltry wo commands — run or jump — at his disposal, the ability to eat a mushroom ‘0 grow in size, and the same old enemies — the Goomba and Koopa

Troopa — to take on in the same old

way. Only a fresh lick of paint indicated hat this was a different game at all. But even within that first level, there are a couple of hints of the greatness

‘o come. Around halfway through,

we come across the first of many

new power-ups, a leaf that illogically ransforms Mario into a raccoon, complete with ears and stripy tail.

Even more illogically, we discover

hat running at high speed for long enough while dressed in the raccoon suit will cause Mario to lift from

he ground and fly through the air, eventually leading to a hidden batch of coins high above the ground. And, with that, the tone is set for a game that has a new surprise around every corner and a secret treat to discover where most games would make do with the >

ULTIMATE GUIDE: SUPER MARIO BROS 3 Pixel Perfect The many sumptuous sprites of Super Mario Bros 3

HSS

Mario Super Mario Luigi Tanooki Mario Fire Mario Frog Mario

- A Bs ar

Hammer Mario Raccoon Mario Bob-omb Bullet Bill Buzzy Beetle Blooper

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Boomerang Bros Boo Chain Chomp Goomba Hammer Bros ji ia |

f Pa |

a I i all Jelectro Dry Bones Koopa Troopa (Green) Koopa Paratroopa (Green) Koopa Troopa (Red) Kuribo Goomba Lakitu Micro Goomba Paragoomba Piranha Plant Rocky Wrench Sledge Bros

Statue Mario Thwomp

Morton Roy Wendy Bowser

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 59

Critical Reception

What the gaming press thought...

“Once you start playing you want to keep going, just to see what surprises are around the next corner! I ended up playing it all night!”

- JULIAN RIGNALL, MEAN MACHINES, 1991

"Twin Galaxies SS High Scores

SPEED RUN NAME: RICHARD URETA @ TIME: 00:11:15,

FASTEST FULL COMPLETION (NO WARP WHISTLES)

@ NAME: KYLE GOEWERT. @ TIME: 01:27:34

5 LIFE GAME @ NAME: KYLE GOEWERT. @ TIME: 2,568,080

60 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

‘ ULTIMATE GUIDE:

> rudimentary and the obvious.

Nintendo and, more accurately, Shigeru Miyamoto, had played around with secrets before, of course. Who could forget the warp pipes of Super Mario Bros, accessed by running along the top of the level of World 1-2? Or the many secrets hidden behind the walls and bushes of Hyrule in The Legend Of Zelda? Miyamoto was famous for taking a childlike curiosity and sense of discovery and using it as inspiration for a videogame. And in Super Mario Bros 3, he turned that curiosity into an art form, every inch of the Mushroom Kingdom littered with secret areas and random events.

Not even the menus were safe from this playful sandbox feel. Rather than simply progress from one stage to another in Mario 3, the player was presented with a map screen somewhat akin to a board game, allowing them to move Mario around the board and actually choose which levels he would tackle next, take in some mini-game distractions, and figure out how to take a short cut or two. Take the Hammer Bros that wandered around the map screen, for example: bump into one and you'd be transported to a confrontation with two of the deadliest enemies in the Mario series. Most players would do everything to avoid them, but if you were brave enough to take them on and win you'd be rewarded with a random power-up that, if you were lucky, would be a hammer that could break certain rocks on the map and open up new routes to the end of the world.

And, of course, there was the Warp Whistle. Like the warp pipes of the first game, the whistle allowed experienced players to skip ahead to

Power Ups

(= oa Ee

» This sliding mini-game was one of several that could earn bonuses for the player between levels.

the more challenging later levels. But figuring out how to find those whistles was a much harder proposition. The first, for example, required the player

to discover that it was possible to actually enter the background layer of the stage

in World 1-3 by crouching on an unassuming white block for several seconds. Once into the background, Mario could run all the way along the stage, safe from enemy attack, and beyond the goal to a secret Toad House where he would be rewarded with a Warp Whistle.

This trick was actually one of the simpler secrets to be uncovered in Super Mario Bros 3. One that transformed a wandering Hammer Brother into an airship, for example, could only be activated by finishing a level in a time with an even number at the end while also holding a multiple of 11 coins. Such formulae were cleverly

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used to give the game a mysterious feeling of randomness, while others, like the Warp Whistle secret, were more about engendering a sense of exploration in the player.

Either way, these secrets and random events made Super Mario Bros 3a game way ahead of its time.

It was a game that could be played over and over again, each playthrough offering a new surprise over the last. It was a game that offered real choice to the player, years before the branching narrative RPG became popular. And it was a game so packed with new and exciting elements to discover that some of its parts took on a near-mythical status, allowing fellow players to trade their discoveries and speculate about what might also be hidden. 20 years on, it's a game that still keeps surprising us, and we can't think of many other videogames that can make the same claim. ¥

Mario is famed for his power-ups, and Super Mario Bros 3 had some of the greatest ever seen in the whole series

a

»Mushroom » Fire »Super Star _»Frog Suit »Kuribo » Leaf » Hammer An old favourite. __ Flower _ Makes Mario Turns Mario into Avery rare Turns Mario into Transforms Transforms Another classic. invulnerable for a frog, granting boot that we a raccoon and Mario into Mario into This one grants a short period him exceptional find a Goomba grants him the a Hammer the larger Mario the of time. You'll hopping and hopping around _abilityof flight. | Brother, with the Super Mario. ability to throw get to listen to swimming in. Mario can It's avery useful _ ability to throw Effectively acts fireballs for a some funky ability. It's very, use it like item so make hammers. It’s as an extra life. limited time. music, too. very handy. a vehicle. the most of it. hammer time!

Memorable Moments

Curtain Call The intro to Super Mario Bros 3 presents the entire game to the player as though it were a stage production, complete with spotlights and huge curtains. It's aweird premise that's never really explained, but it is one of the most memorable and iconic openings to any NES game.

TOO teehee ee GI IGDx = CEDy|

Question Blocked A Question Block sits on the ground in the first stage, befuddling Super Mario Bros players who are only used to hitting the blocks from below. The solution: get a Koopa shell and throw it into the block. Genius.

t's terribles King has been

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King Idiot

Cut-scenes in a 2D Mario game? Can you believe it? These pre-boss battle scenes were pretty cool, though, always showing the King of the Mushroom Kingdom transformed into something humiliating.

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aT TT LittleBigMario

World 4's oversized level designs had a real wow factor in the NES days, even though they were really quite simple. The concept is so well- loved, though, that it was recently revived for Super Mario Galaxy 2.

ULTIMATE GUIDE: SUPER MARIO BROS 3

Non-Linear

Get to a certain point in the World 1 map screen and it suddenly dawns on you that there's now

a significant element of choice in Super Mario Bros 3. Four different options are available at this first junction alone.

Hopping Mad Super Mario Bros 3's Frog Suit is one of the most iconic power-ups of all time and was the stuff

of legend back in the NES days. It felt so cool to mess around with, exploring underwater with fewer of the normal limitations.

Statue Mario

The Tanooki Suit is an enhanced form of Raccoon Mario that gives him fur all over in addition to the ears and the tail. Hold down and B while wearing the suit and Mario will turn into a statue, making him invincible.

We present the best bits of the e ending to best NES game Nintendo ever made Ye ale Bro . ay 6 olehem: DD x DD, B demo zie GBR BEERS okoGl Se a breate Hide And Seek

Crouch on any white block for a few seconds and Mario will fall off it and into the background layer of the stage. Sometimes it's just for fun; other times it can actually lead Mario to a very cool secret.

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Bum Rush Pick up some speed and hold down on a slope like this and Mario will slide all the way down on his backside, taking out any enemies he hits during his descent. It's the sort of satisfying moment that SMB3 does best.

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An Old Friend Lakitu makes his return in Super Mario Bros 3, but we wouldn't call it a ‘long-awaited’ one.

He's still an annoying little nuisance. His later relegation to cameraman and traffic light holder couldn't come soon enough.

eT

Fe ee te te ete he te ie tei teed

Suited And Booted

The Kuribo Shoe is probably the rarest item in Super Mario Bros 3, only appearing in a couple of levels. It also has to be one of the weirdest power-ups in a Mario game. Do you think there's an old woman and her family in there too?

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 61

World Tour

The Mushroom Kingdom has been represented in many different ways throughout Mario history,

but Super Mario Bros 3 was the first time it was presented in so much detail. Here’s how it stacked up, from interactive map screens to the levels themselves and their climactic boss battles.

WORLD 1

World 1 eases the player in gently, the opening level featuring zero hazards and only a couple of fairly docile enemies, but the threats quickly escalate. Before the world is through you'll have contended with slippery ice slopes toward oblivion, an assault from the pesky Boomerang Bros, and a madcap dash through an airship as cannonballs shoot at you from all directions. Phew!

BOSS: Iggy

One of Bowser's seven

children known as the

Koopalings, Iggy is

named after real-life

rocker Iggy Pop. But that's not a microphone in his hand: it's a deadly magic wand that he wants to shoot at Mario. Thankfully, he’s quite easy to dodge and, a trio of head stomps later, he'll be out of the game.

mmm 62 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

a

‘ULTIMATE GUIDE:

Be A

2 ORLD 3 The third world is almost entirely made up of water-based levels, always some of the trickiest stages in Mario games, especially when there's a giant fish leaping out of the depths in an attempt to swallow him whole. Thankfully, however, our hero has a new trick up his sleeve in the form of the Frog Suit, which grants him enhanced swimming and jumping abilities.

BOSS: Wendy

Bowser's only daughter awaits Mario at the end of World 3, ™ and she's no princess, let us tell you. Like her brothers, her

weapon of choice is a wand, and this one fires what look like life rings. Wendy is named after Wendy O Williams, lead singer of punk outfit The Plasmatics.

WORLD 2

World 2's desert landscapes throw some truly unexpected enemies at you, including a teeny tiny Goomba that hides underneath blocks of sand. One level introduces the now-customary Boo enemy, a ghost that will stop pursuing you as long as you look it in the eye. And in another stage you're even attacked by the sun itself. Weird.

BOSS: Morton —, Not that much more A I troubling than his brother Iggy, Morton also wields a wand but is able to throw out multiple bouncing projectiles at once. Also named after a real-life musician, he takes his name from American singer and talk show host Morton Downey Jr.

PER MARIO BROS 3

LIORLG 6

World 6 is where things really start to get tough. Icy surfaces, spiked floors and multiple enemy types all crowded into the screen make it very easy for Mario to meet his demise if you don’t keep precise control over him at all times. Prepare to use a fair few continues in this world.

BOSS:

Lemmy

Riding around on

a huge rubber

ball, Lemmy

causes trouble for Mario by launching several other bouncy balls at him. It's utter chaos and pretty difficult to get through in one piece. We'll forgive Lemmy, though, simply because he's named after the legendary lead singer of UK metallers Motérhead.

WORLD 5 While the first half of the fifth world takes place in familiar grassland territory, the second half sends Mario up into the air to explore the clouds. Being so high up, however, means only one thing: lots and lots of bottomless pits to fall into. BOSS: Roy Jy One of the most dangerous of the Koopalings, "Roy is able to stomp on the ground, sending out shockwaves that stun Mario into submission for a few seconds. Best to stay in the air, then. He's named after Roy Orbison. Of course.

LIORLG &

Anyone who used Warp Whistles to cheat their way to oH the final world soon found that their skills were nowhere foayee. near up to the challenge, as Bowser's army attacks Mario

with a mile-long caravan of gigantic tanks. This level, and a Oe ee ree. the handful that followed, are some of the hardest in | Fe ae ae mee i | iF

Mario's history.

BOSS: Bowser (ole) King Koopa himself awaits Mario at the Po) end of World 8, and he’s suitably tough to . ==

beat. You can't actually hurt him, so dodge H |

his fireballs and try to get him to stomp

in the middle of the stage. If he does it

enough he'll break the floor and fall into

the lava below.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 33 ——

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Telele TOUGH BUT FAIR

» NES » 1986 » NINTENDO

There are some who regard Kid Icarus as an

unsung hero of the NES. While I'd be the first

to admit that the game looks and sounds pretty

— thanks to it running from the same guts as

Metroid, and having that sublime Tanaka music. For me, it's ever so slightly let down by some frustrating little design flaws. [But | love Kid /carus! - Ed]

Kid Icarus still demonstrates that good ol’ Nintendo template; creating a videogame based on three central characters: a good God, a bad God, who's been turned into an evil medusa by the good God, and an unlikely hero with a silly name.

Essentially trying to cram platform, shooting and RPG elements into one game and, for the mostpart, succeeding, Kid Icarus does undo a little of that greatness by throwing up a troupe of brilliantly drawn, but annoyingly cheap enemies that make you want to rip the cart from your NES and kick it at a furnace. Needless to say, practice is key.

Pit, your angelic hero, has to face off against an army of skeletons that will absorb a ridiculous amount of arrows, silly sporadic squids that miraculously appear from the base of the screen at the most maddening of moments and plenty of stupid drops that kill your character outright. But thanks to its levelling up and shopping elements, the further you get in the game the easier it gets, which | do like.

For the quest, Nintendo has bestowed us one measly life, which was probably its attempt to impart this jarring sense of realism. But when you're playing a videogame about an angel quashing a bunch of flying eyes and eggplants with arrow heads, it does feel a little unfair.

The game isn't a complete tool, however, as when you die, you can always fall back on its 24-digit, case-sensitive password system. Nintendo would soften the blow though by putting it to use on some brilliant cheat codes. Just input ‘8uuuuU UUUUUU UUUUUU UUUUUU’ if you want to see the game's final Parodius stage — and see a fully powered Pit take to the skies and face off against a giant eyeball and its pet dragon.

100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 65

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first saw Tetris at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, 1988,” says Henk Rogers, the man who had changed the gaming world = once by introducing the RPG to Japan with Famicom’s Black Onyx. Little did he know that he was about to do it again by taking an amazing new Russian puzzle game and embarking down a path that would eventually bring that game to the masses. “I was going to trade shows looking for games to bring to Japan. Most of the games, you really can’t get a feel for how they play in such a short time. You stand in line, it’s your turn to play, you play a little and then you move on. Well by the time I'd played Tetris for the fourth time | realised | was hooked. | started going after the rights there and then.” Before getting involved with the Game Boy edition, Henk secured the console rights to Tetris

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and produced a Famicom version for Nintendo. But initially, its success was far from assured. “That Christmas, Tetris had come out and | thought it was going to be a great opportunity,” remembers Henk. “But for a game to become a hit you really have to sell about 100 to 200 thousand in your first order, and I'd managed to get 40,000. That's not even worth making. | went to [Nintendo president] Hiroshi Yamauchi and | said, ‘Listen, | think | have one of the greatest games of all time here. | don’t know what I’m doing wrong, maybe it’s my sales guy or my marketing guy is ineffective, whatever, but it's off to a wrong start and | need your help, so can you do something for me?’

“He called in Miyamoto and said ‘Is this really a great game?’ and Miyamoto replied ‘All of your accountants and secretaries are playing this game

Unced, Soe Weren't Supposed TO

on their lunch breaks and after hours every day. It's a great game!’ So then Yamauchi called in Hiroshi Imanishi, who was the number two, and said ‘I want you to have our sales guy call every distribution company and tell them to order more. I'm going ‘Wow! There’s some serious action going on there.”

Yamauchi’s typically fierce business acumen netted Famicom’s Tetris another 30,000 orders, bringing the total number up to 70,000, which was still some way off the minimum 100,000 orders needed to generate a hit. With so many excess cartridges in production Bulletproof would have to start slashing prices or dumping stock altogether by January, a resort that Henk simply couldn't afford to take. “If a game goes into dumping and is sold for less than it cost then you're basically screwed!” exclaims Henk. “Nothing has ever come back from that situation. So | called my sales guy and got him to call the distributors saying

Wor Peer Union, You talk To anyoody"

‘This is not a game that sells quickly. Hold onto your inventory because it will come back!’ This was something unheard of, and some of the stores actually did sell out by February and eventually

all the stores were screaming for the game. We ended up selling 2 million.”

If this situation wasn’t stressful enough, Henk arrived in Russia that same February, uninvited yet determined to grab the handheld rights to Tetris for Nintendo’s Game Boy platform. “That was my first time there and it was my reason for going. In February, with a tourist visa, | landed in Moscow and started looking for Electronorgtechnica. And | was unannounced, which never happened in the Soviet Union. You weren't supposed to talk to anybody, let alone do any kind of business with anybody, and this was a government organisation. | walk into this place unannounced and they’re going ‘who the hell are you?’ | said, ‘I’m the guy who publishes Tetris in Japan. | want to talk to somebody about it.’ The guy, Mr Belikov, who

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THE MAKING OF: TETRIS

» Hooray! | Quadruple line score! Waiting for that | Tetrimino almost always pays off if you're aiming for those really high scores.

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE :| 67

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Henk Rogers recalls Alexey Pajitnov’s first trip to Japan

“HE DIDN'T HAVE any first-hand knowledge. The first time | brought him into Japan and we went into

a supermarket, his jaw dropped.

His reaction was like ‘Oh my God!’ that this could possibly exist. If you wanted an apple in Moscow you had to stand in line with a hundred people and wait for them to call

you up. You had no choice. And there’s no sign in that window saying ‘apple for sale’. Word gets around and when you see people queuing you know there’s something for

sale there. Now here he was in a supermarket surrounded by piles of fruit, and people could just pick the ones that they wanted. And these were ordinary people. They weren't rich and it wasn’t a movie set. Up till then he kind of thought that all these things were like movies; they didn’t actually exist, they were just props in a movie. But then he realised, oh my God, all that stuff you see in a movie actually exists. | nok there were tears in his eyes.”

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ended up negotiating with me eventually got into a lot of trouble for meeting me. They grilled him! They said, ‘how did you get in touch? You must have had secret communication with him.’ They bugged his room and listened in on his conversations, to find out how the hell he found me when, actually, he had nothing to do with it.” So how did Henk manage to track down the owners of Tetris against such resistance and suspicion? How did it all come about? “| rented an interpreter and a car with a chauffeur. In retrospect, she was probably KGB. She knew everything about everything and already knew who | was and what | was looking for. She would have the answer to my questions before I’d even asked them. So, they drove me to the Ministry Of Software on the Thursday, the day after I'd arrived, but she wouldn't go in with me. | said, ‘Why not? What are you talking about?’ She said, “You don't have an invitation. You're not supposed to go in there. And | can’t go in there.’ ‘But you're my interpreter’, | said. Then | thought ‘Well, | didn’t come all the way to the Soviet Union, thousands of miles, to be stopped by a door.’ So | just walked

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through that door. | said, ‘I want to talk to someone about Tetris.’

“A little while later, somebody came down the stairs and asks ‘who the hell are you’. | explain and say ‘I publish the Nintendo version of Tetris in Japan’. And he says... ‘We never sold those rights to anyone’. Well, holy crap! | had 100,000 cartridges in manufacturing, which means that I’ve borrowed 2 million dollars from the bank, using all of my in-laws’ land as collateral, and it turns out | have to bury those cartridges. | was really screwed... There was no way | could pay them back. So | said ‘Listen, | want to talk to somebody about it. And sure enough the next day | was given the third degree for three hours. Again, there were the guys from the ministry, the guys from KGB and there was [Tetris creator] Alexey Pajitnov. He was in the room! The ministry knew nothing about

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the game and the only one who knew anything about it was Alexey. | could actually have a decent conversation with him about it. | was the first guy he met from outside the Soviet Union that actually understood anything about the game at all.” Henk’s’ friendship with Pajitnov, and his persistence with Electronorgtechnica, eventually paid off and he returned to Japan with the rights to produce the first officially licensed handheld edition of Tetris, which would be programmed by Nintendo. “I came up with the innovation of which buttons to use,” says Henk. “I thought that | had to make the interface a certain way, to match the way the PC game worked. The way the PC version worked, you have a left, a right, the middle button is rotate and then the space bar is hard drop. So if you flip that and transfer it to the little Nintendo controller, you've got left, right, pull down to rotate and then the fire button will give you a hard drop. That’s how it translates, and | thought that

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didn’t make sense, that the movement of the piece should all be on the left hand and rotation of the piece on the right hand. | asked my programmers to make it that way but when we sent it to OA everybody hated it. But of course, if you're in the middle of playing a game and all of a sudden the gas pedal and brake are reversed then nobody

can handle that. And, in fact, that’s exactly what Nintendo did, putting the movement and drop on the D-pad and left and right rotation on the two buttons. They also added a soft drop to the D-pad. And that was one of the complaints about it, that you'd move left and right and every once in a while accidentally hit the down button and cause a hard drop. But Nintendo added the soft drop so it would only drop a little faster rather than instantly. You could still control it after hitting down by accident.”

orting Tetris to Game Boy should have been a simple affair, but there was another complication. “The approval was meant to be done on a Friday and then the game would go to mastering on the Monday, so there really was no time,” recalls Henk. “So on Friday | get the game and I’m playing, on a Game Boy, and it feels like one of the pieces is coming up more than the others. It’s supposed to be random, a one in seven chance of

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or you have to create something good enough, so | told my guys ‘Find me a Russian folk song’, because those things are free, theyre public domain. And the fact that they've lasted hundreds of years means that they must be good. And yet people in the west haven't heard them as much as the people in Russia have, so let’s

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give it a shot. We tried it and it was okay, people didn’t object to it. And it ended up becoming a ‘have to have’ together with Tetris; people started identifying the game with that music, which is a good thing. But it turns out that they weren't all folk songs. One of them was a soldier singing to his girl while he’s fighting, hoping that he'll make it back. If I'd have known what the words were... | had no idea.”

each piece coming up at any given moment. So | told my QA guys, ‘Give me the statistics on how often each piece comes out.’ And, sure enough, it turns out that one of the pieces is coming out twice as often as the rest. So | called Nintendo and said, ‘This is unacceptable. The Russians are never going to allow this!’

What Henk wasn’t telling Nintendo, is that the Russians didn’t actually require final approval. “| pretended, because the rights came from me, that | had to get approval from the Russians, which | didn’t because no one there knew a damn thing, and we didn’t have the time to send them the game then wait for a reaction to come back. But they didn’t understand the game anyway, ‘so it didn’t matter.” Instead, Henk relied on his own instinct. “There really is no other game that requires a real random number generator,” he continues. “If one too many stars come up in Mario nobody is ever going to know it was a mistake, but in Tetris you’d know. So Nintendo’s programmers came to my office in Yokohama from Kyoto, two guys come in and we sit there and think of how to fix it. For them to write a new random number generator on Saturday, ready for mastering on Monday was unthinkable. So | said, ‘It's piece one that’s coming up twice as much as

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the rest, so this is what you do. When you roll a one it means it’s piece one. The next time you roll a one, you add one. The next time you roll a one, you add two, and so on. That way the error in the random number generator will be spread across all the pieces.’ So that’s what they did and then you couldn't tell that it wasn’t random.”

And with that, Game Boy Tetris was completed. There's an end to Henk’s Tetris story; the decision to give away this fantastic game for free, to everyone in the west who bought a new Game Boy. “I think | was in Redmond talking with Nintendo and it seemed like Game Boy was the best platform for Tetris. [Minoru Arakawa said ‘Why shouldn't | pack in Mario?’ | said ‘Well if you want to sell Game Boy to little boys then pack in Mario but if you want to sell Game Boy to everybody then pack in Tetris.”

Game Boy and Tetris went hand-in-hand, and with sales of 30 million, they put both game and hardware into the collective consciousness of a generation. Henk Rogers now runs the Tetris Company alongside Alexey Pajitnov, licensing Tetris and standardising its rules for future generations. 31 years after Henk first got hooked on Tetris, it seems he still can’t put the puzzle game down. ¥

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CREATING AN EPIC FANTASY ADVENTURE FOR A TINY MONOCHROME SCREEN WAS NEVER GOING TO BE AN EASY TASK. BUT, TO THE SURPRISE OF ABSOLUTELY NOBODY , NINTENDO HAD THE COURAGE, WISDOM, AND POWER TO PULL IT OFF FLAWLESSLY. RETRO GAMER REVISITS ONE OF THE MOST UNDERRATED MEMBERS OF THE ZELDA FAMILY

LTIMATE GUIDE: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING

CHEF BEAR AMT I-KIRBY

f there’s one thing that other games could

stand to learn from Link’s Awakening, it’s

that the stakes don’t need to be absurdly

high for a story to be captivating. Having spent three games (and many more after this one) dealing with potential end-of-the-world scenarios, Link’s Awakening is little more than an escape room by comparison — our hero finds himself marooned on a strange island following a shipwreck and is tasked with simply getting away. And so, under the guidance of a talking owl and with a little help from some of the friendly islanders, Link sets about attempting to wake the mighty Wind Fish from its slumber, which is apparently the only way he might leave Koholint Island.

Mechanically, Link’s Awakening feels

Eats aL Co) greatest Weel ete ol For some unknown reason, Marin really likes it when you use the Shovel. the best elements of the trio of preceding TR eae ene MRT cae games. Parallels with A Link To The Past are unsurprising given that this game originally

started out as a proposed port of the SNES another case of big ideas on hardware that MARTH classic, but it clearly helped to influence should by rights be too small for them. Literally,

and inform much of the Game Boy release’s in this case - as well as a smaller, monochrome

design. In terms of the NES games, Zelda II's screen to work with, there would also be the

impact is most apparent from the inclusion button limitations of the Game Boy to consider

of side-scrolling sections, while similarities to after A Link To The Past had gone beyond what

the original primarily spring from this being was possible on the two-button NES controller.

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first issue, but the second would not be so easily resolved.

Despite the Game Boy sharing the same limited control options as the NES, A Link To The Past evolved the core systems of the series to a point that made use of more buttons, so a creative solution was required. To that end, Link’s Awakening became the first Zelda game where the sword is not mapped to its own button, with both the A and B buttons

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able to be assigned to any item Link finds. While this can make for some fiddly item switching (particularly in later, more complex dungeons), the flexibility of the system also allows for the use of item combos the likes of which the series hadn’t seen before... or since, really. Long gaps can be cleared by combining the Pegasus Boots with the Roc’s Feather, for instance, or equipping Bombs and the Bow and pressing both buttons simultaneously allows Link to loose an explosive arrow. While the former is the only item combo required to beat the game, having those other options in there gives players a chance to be surprised by their own experimental solutions — a rarity ina series so grounded in linear formula, and really Seo) nn1-) (al iale mele moa Vela MCL entry in the Zelda series, Breath Of The Wild.

he differences between Link’s Awakening EUR me mice yells elma) b there, either. Trading sequences are a staple sidequest in the franchise, but this is the only Zelda game where the entire endeavour is mandatory. As such, it’s a little

@ Arriving some five years after the original game's release, Link’s Awakening DX for Game , Boy Color breathed new life into the classic

adventure with its vivid palette and suite of new features. Chief among these — aside from the

colourful visual upgrade — is a brand-new dungeon

for Link to explore. The aptly named Color ) Dungeon expands on what was possible in the monochrome original, with puzzles and mechanics that rely on the use of coloured objects and enemies. Completing this trial rewards Link with Eelam) Mitt a Mat" Od olde Sel =] (Tel Ole new items that double his attack and defence respectively. In addition, the enhanced port also features support for the Game Boy Printer, with a number of photo opportunities added to the world for Link to find over the course of his adventure. The resulting snapshots can be printed out as cute aCe ewe ee eee

Aisa CMe Van aM eee MUM aun SCM a TE TCOn TIC) and make you start the fight over. Mind the gaps as you work its tail.

more streamlined and obvious than its peers and feels more like helping people out along your journey, rather than ditching your main objective and going out of your way to run errands for them. It’s strange that would be the case in the game with the least pressing objective in the entire series, but it’s a great way of allowing players to meet the weird and wonderful residents of Koholint without it feeling like busywork. But perhaps the most noticeable difference of all is the game’s tone, which is much more playful, whimsical and lighthearted than any other game in the series, thanks in no small part to the lack of a Ganon-like big bad looming large and ready to bring an end to the world.

There's just this wonderful dreamlike quality to - Koholint, apparent in everything from its curious _ cast of characters and creatures to it having the

feel of a slightly misremembered memory of a Zelda adventure, with elements of other Nintendo games seeping in (domesticated Chain Chomps are found in Mabe Village, Mario enemies such as Goombas and Piranha Plants inhabit dungeons, as does an evil version of Kirby later on, while

- the trading sequence includes cameos from

ULTIMATE GUIDE: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING

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@ We've long maintained that Link's Awakening original’s simple style. A slightly angled top-down recreated, there’s also another brand-new dungeon deserves to be enjoyed and adored by a much wider viewpoint allows the game's beautiful environments OMe MMMM Malu Lm OU ale Cee CUe tLe) audience, and Nintendo finally seems to agree — the to pop like never before, and it’s going to be a joy proposition, as it allows players to piece together CEM MMe aR Me RMU mel yg to see how the many and varied locations across Lime meet ee eee Mie eel me Tarle(-y relmateele eal eel em eM CaN eo UG) ite] ata CM Cle am emer Le ul ate Mar li ae ( 1 Caton rooms unlocked as the game progresses. You can looks like a diorama come to life, and while it might As with Link's Awakening DX before it, Nintendo Oe Ce mae laale mele mee Clu)

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100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE | 73

74 | 100 GAMES TO PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE

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