There’s a certain subset of old Nintendo games I’m particularly fond of; let’s call them “action/adventure” for lack of a more precise term. These are games which involve both twitch reflexes and exploration/problem solving, quite often with light RPG elements.1 In modern times, these have been called “Metroidvania” games, a portmanteau of two titles which exemplified this genre, Metroid (Nintendo, 1986 (Japan)/1987 (US)) and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest2 (Konami, 1987 (Japan)/1988 (US)). However, these aren’t the only retro3 games made in this mold.
These old games had an appeal that lay beyond the well-crafted design and charmingly beautiful pixel art. That there was more of a goal than getting a high score, that you had to use your head as well as your pure gaming skill, was an obvious part of the allure. It was the older I got that I came to appreciate what really made these games special were the limitations on the NES hardware.
The best analogy to compare the power of the NES to modern-day game consoles is in the realm of deep space exploration: Think of, say, a PlayStation 5 like a smartphone, which has a million times the computing power of the old technology, the NES in our example, used to put men on the moon.4 A PlayStation 5 might not be that many orders of magnitude more powerful than the NES, but you get the point.
With these constraints came the requirement that the games be designed to fit these limitations. If you only have X amount space for color, sprites, graphics, and music, you have to make every last bit count, and you also have to deliver a superlative gameplay experience that made up for the lack of technical beauty you could get by, say, going to the movies.
This is not to say that these old games weren’t gorgeous in their own way. Look at that sunset in Rygar (Tecmo, 1986 (Japan)/1987 (US)). Or the title screen in Final Fantasy (Square, 1987 (Japan)/1990 (US)). Or the entirety of Little Samson (Taito, 1992). To say that the old gray box did not provide any eye candy is a lie. More importantly, with graphics that left so much to the imagination, the gameplay had to make up for it, and that’s where these old games shone.
When the designers of, say, The Legend of Zelda or The Guardian Legend butted up against a technical barrier, they had to find creative ways around it. There was no throwing money at the problem, you could only throw your intellect. Maybe the developers’ first choice was not feasible, but that only forced them to dig deeper. It is the technological equivalent of sticking to a poetic or musical form: your symphony has to have these types of movements, and that’s that. Those are the rules, and otherwise it’s not a symphony. Artistic free rein has the potential to give artists the ability to make masterpieces, but very often the constraints of form paradoxically lead to masterpiece by limiting the artist’s range of options.
Given unlimited freedom, you get the equivalent of free jazz: kind of interesting, but there’s not much “there” there. Given limits, the artist is able to focus their talents and craft something memorable. Even Igor Stravinsky returned to structure later in his career.
By all means, push boundaries. Stretch boundaries. Break boundaries. But if you are having difficulty with the act of creation, it may be helpful to find some sort of genre or form to work within, or impose some limits on yourself. It may just be what you need to spark your imagination.
A wonderful word, imagination. It conjures up images of children dreaming of far-off lands, of things that cannot be. That’s what you needed to look at a collection of pixels as an eight-year-old and say, “Yes: that is a rock-spitting octopus monster that walks on dry land.”5 But that’s why those old games held such powerful magic: Your brain had to fill in the rest.
The manuals were A+ productions too.6 It is a shame that most games don’t even come with instruction manuals. Those glossy little pamphlets were where the game designers fleshed out the lore of the world you were about to enter, providing the backstory, enemy and item descriptions, and general vibe along with informing the player about what the buttons did. And then there was StarTropics (Nintento, 1990), where a letter from the main character’s uncle that came with the game actually had to be used in the real world to provide a necessary clue to progress.7 Clever game design or thinly veiled copy protection?8 You be the judge, but it sure was fun.
And the music . . . don’t get me started on the music. I could write posts about how the Mega Man series’ soundtracks are works of art on par with anything on the pop charts. To be able to create such memorable melodies that looped continuously, with so few sound channels, and have them never get old requires compositional acumen far beyond most of what you hear on said charts.
Alas, alas, as is the theme with every human endeavor, all things must pass, the good with the bad. I am not here to lament the current state of gaming, a topic I know nothing about, but the changes in how we play other games that video games hath wrought.
As video games increased in complexity, even in the NES age, so too did the ability to save one’s game. With that ability came the power to go back to an earlier save point and try again. Technology, which never ceases to continue its inexorable march to the promised and dreaded singularity, soon allowed for instantaneous saving and restoring, anytime, anywhere, for any reason at all. You didn’t make that jump, and hadn’t hit the checkpoint yet? It doesn’t matter—just save before the jump, try it, and restore if you end up sinking in that pit of lava. Or if you’re playing an RPG and your attack misses, just go back, bro. Everybody’s doing it.
Fine. Whatever. That’s a part of the medium of video games, the electronic milieu. And yet, and yet . . . given the prevalence of vidya as the world’s number one entertainment option,9 it was inevitable that this spirit seeped into other ludological areas. Take board games like Risk or Monopoly: the dice weren’t kind in your planned invasion of Ukraine?10 You can’t restore to an earlier point in the game. Landed on your girlfriend’s Park Place with three houses? There is no rewind button! You’ve got to roll with it, baby.
Are you playing Dungeons & Dragons? Did you roll for attributes and not get a single number above 11? Too bad—roll with it. Oh, you rolled a 1 while trying to keep the red dragon’s jaws from snapping you in two? Well, now you’ve been snapped in three. Roll up a new guy and get on with it.
There is an expression, “Nintendo hard,” referring to games like Ninja Gaiden (Tecmo, 1988 (Japan)/1989 (US)) that would crush your nuts yet keep you coming back for more. Or Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (Konami, 1989 (Japan)/1990 (US)), which was made more difficult for the American release because screw Yankee blue-jean round eyes, that’s why.11 But you couldn’t stop playing.
And you got good.
And you got a little farther. And a little more. And a little more.
Sure, we were kids with too much free time and fewer entertainment options who thought nothing of playing the same few levels over and over until you got to that one spot you couldn’t pass. In retrospect, it is depressing to think about all of that wasted time. Let’s move on.
You would purchase a game, and never beat it. Ever. The expectation wasn’t that you’d win in a month or two, and if you couldn’t you’d just look up a FAQ or a gameplay video. No, you were lucky if the gaming magazine you subscribed to or might have been able to find on the newsstand discussed the very specific part of the very specific game that was giving you fits.
Video games were not a way of life when I was a child, not yet. We all played them, yet made fun of the kids who spent all day, every day indoors glued to their console. Now, that’s de riguer. I am getting into “old man yells at cloud” territory, which is not fair to younger generations. Nobody controls the world they are born into. And I fully understand why video games provide such an attractive alternative to what modernity has to offer.12 I just don’t know—and I mean that literally because I have not been a “gamer” in over 20 years—if video games still offer that same sort of imagination fuel, that demand on the player to get good and keep trying, that perseverance that is almost sport-like, if that sport is golf, in the way that you’re not necessarily playing against another player, or he computer, but against the game itself.
Has min/maxing, optimization and efficiency, and instant gratification killed the stick-to-itiveness required to master ball-breakingly difficult games? Has the element of chance, and accepting adverse outcomes, been excised from the medium, much to our detriment? Have the stat-nerds ruined video games too?
Maybe they haven’t, and maybe it hasn’t. Maybe my observations are based only on my limited interactions with the young kids in my family and immediate vicinity. Time will tell. The important thing to realize, though, is that this post is not about video games.
-Alexander
PS Check out my friend Dylan’s site Questicle, where he reviewed every single NES game. Also, here are some of the best action/adventure games and series on the old NES:
The Legend of Zelda/Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: The granddaddies of them all. The first game was sui generis, offering top-down exploration and total freedom, gated only in a few instances by necessary items. The sequel was different by being a side-scroller with experience points and a leveling system, but retaining that same sense of freedom (and difficulty).
Metroid: Imagine the video game equivalent of an Alien movie, except Ripley had an awesome suit of power armor. Creepy, sci-fi/horror exploration in a huge, claustrophobic subterranean environment on an alien planet filled with hordes of brain-sucking beasties. And your character is female! That was novel in the eighties, and no it didn’t make young boys hate her or the game.
The Battle of Olympus: It’s literally just Zelda II in Ancient Greece, but it does everything right. This game just goes to show that if you’re going to rip someone off, rip off the best and then do it better.
Faxanadu: Another Zelda II clone that does enough differently to become a truly one-of-a-kind experience. Further, more than any game on this list, the use of graphics and music creates one of the best atmospheres in videogame history. You feel the desolation of a slowly decaying world.
The Guardian Legend: Hey look, it’s a sci-fi shooter! Until it becomes a . . . The Legend of Zelda set on a space station full of evil aliens hurtling towards Earth? Great mix of two genres, great music, great sound, great fun, and look at that, another female protagonist.
Crystalis: Another The Legend of Zelda clone, but with more RPG elements, faster action, bright colors, and a really fun and pulpy post-apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy mish-mash of a setting. I got this for my tenth birthday from my grandparents; one of the most memorable gifts of all-time.
Bionic Commando: Your guy can’t jump, but he has a cool robotic arm that lets him swing around like Spider-Man. A bit more basic than some of the other games in this genre due to it appearing early in the NES’s lifecycle, but another memorable romp. And you shoot Hitler in the face with a rocket launcher and watch his head explode. Wild.
Rygar: You are the reanimated corpse of a legendary warrior summoned from death to defeat Ligar who is, uh, a lion man. Gain levels! Find items! Go to strange new lands in both side-scrolling and overhead levels! Enjoy the killer soundtrack and weird giant old men who distribute gear and clues! Excellent game.
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest: With this entry, Konami took the side-scrolling, demon-whipping action of the first game and added open-world exploration with towns, experience, new items to gain, people to talk to (and get lied to by), and tons of secrets. It’s not a perfect game, but it’s a blast with graphics and music so good it’s quite honestly remarkable they were able to push the hardware so far so early. Don’t listen to the haters: it’s a good one. Arguably the most important game in the series.
StarTropics/Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics II: Yet another The Legend of Zelda clone, but the action is more deliberate, requiring fewer reflexes and more thinking. Add in a fun soundtrack, colorful tropical world, and lighthearted story set in modern times, and you’ve got a recipe for adventure. The sequel adds some new wrinkles in the action department with a fun time-travel story. It’s a shame this series ended here.
Kid Icarus: Another early title, one much rougher around the edges than Metroid or the Zelda games, but a worthy entry into the action/adventure realm. A hybrid of side-scrolling action and labyrinth exploration that suddenly turns into a shooter in the final world, Kid Icarus has many intriguing ideas—vertical scrolling! Experience! Item collection!—that has an odd difficulty curve: it gets easier as it progresses. Stick with this one until you can get past the first world; you won’t be sorry.
Blaster Master: Your pet frog finds nuclear waste in your backyard, jumps down a nearby hole, and ends up in a subterranean kingdom filled with vicious monsters (?). You follow down the hole, find a power suit and awesome vehicle (??) and collect powerups in the massive hidden world, defeating gigantic bosses until you find him. This game is all the right kinds of bonkers, featuring different game modes with a focus on exploration. Really cool level design, a rocking soundtrack, and great atmosphere make you want to keep pushing forward despite the punishing difficulty. Top notch.
The Lone Ranger: Yes, they made a game based on the iconic 1950s TV show . . . but the “they” in question is Konami, so you know it’s got to be good. And it is. Overhead exploration, side-scrolling action, and even first-person maze levels in a Western setting not often seen on the NES. A very unique title.
Strider: The NES version of the legendary arcade action game is a globe-trotting adventure where your magic-using superspy ninja (yes, that’s a thing) tries to solve the mystery of his brother-in-arms’s assassination. A bit unpolished, but super-fun and satisfying.
Gargoyle’s Quest II: The sequel to a fantastic Game Boy title, Gargoyle’s Quest II puts the player once again in the role of Firebrand, one of those awful red demons from the Ghosts ‘n Goblins games, except here he’s a good guy and he has to collect items and explore massive levels to save the ghoul realm from destruction. Atmospheric and creepy.
Willow: A movie tie-in that isn’t awful. That’s because it was made by Capcom. A tie-in with the 1988 fantasy film that goes its own direction story-wise, Willow copies The Legend of Zelda, but like the best clones, has enough fresh ideas to be engaging in its own right. Perfect? No. Fun? Absolutely.
River City Ransom: Hey, you got a beat ‘em up in my action/adventure game! Yes indeed, and it’s a very fun combination. Play as best friends Alex and Ryan and punch gang members en route to reach River City High, where Ryan’s girlfriend is being held captive by the evil Slick. Gain money, power up by eating food, and learn new techniques from magazines at the game’s many malls. And you get to use a sauna, featuring some of the first video game ass in existence. ASS!13 I felt vaguely naughty playing this game as a kid.
My first novel, A Traitor to Dreams, was inspired heavily by the sorts of old games discussed in this post. Check it out here.
That is, things like experience points, a leveling system to make the player character more powerful, and the acquisition of new items or weapons/armor to make the character stronger or help them overcome previously impassable obstacles.
This game is the “black sheep” of the Castlevania series according to people with no taste. Simon’s Quest’s only failing was being ahead of its time. The “Metroidvania” term was created for 1997’s PlayStation release, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the first iteration where the available technology finally caught up to Konami’s ambition for the series.
That’s what us oldheads call old stuff so we don’t feel old, even though we’re old.
And yet we haven’t been able to return to the moon. Very strange.
At one point, the main character Mike Jones has to enter his archeologist uncle’s last known coordinates into his submarine, the Sub-C. Sub-C’s navigational robot tells Mike that he has to dip his uncle’s letter in water for the coordinates to appear. I was sleeping over at my buddy Danny’s house when we got to this point, and I still remember filling up his bathroom sink and holding our breaths as we slowly dipped the letter in. Goosebumps, my friends. Goosebumps. I still remember the code, too: 747.
Copy protection, for those who don’t know, refers to anti-piracy methods, such as hiding vital clues in game manuals or other materials you’d only get if you purchased the game, or in the case of PC gaming giant Sierra, entire spell recipes or a face you’d have to correctly identify before the game would even begin.
I guess technically drugs would be it . . .
Too soon?
Japanese developers jacked up the difficulty on quite a few games for their American release, and for an interesting reason: video game rentals, which were illegal in Japan, were a huge thing here in the 80s and 90s. Japanese developers worried that players would forego forking over $60 for a game when they could just rent it a few times and beat it for a fraction of that cost. So Castlevania III in the US featured enemies that did more damage, fewer powerups, and the total weakening of character Grant Danasty, who threw a dagger as a default weapon in the Japanese version, but merely wielded a tiny little knife in America.
Especially to young men.
Man, the memories from all of those great games you mentioned...
I think an even better analogy of limitations helping creativity is rock music. Before the advent of computers and click tracks and ProTools and endless digital tracks, from the 60s to the 90s, musicians and producers/engineers were limited in what they could do. And yet the creativity to come up with new sounds, new recording techniques, new effects, and working with the limitations of numbers of tracks and magnetic tracks made for some of the best sounding records (and that doesn’t even take into account the musical talent and songwriting skill). Now, you can have 1000 tracks and save everything on a thumb drive, dial up any effect or sound you want, and have perfect tempo that never wavers tied to a click track...and it’s boring as fuck (in addition to the complete lack of talent and songwriting skill).
Just my $0.02, I’ll stop yelling at the cloud now.
People still love pixel art in their games; see Minecraft, Blasphemous, and Terraria and so many more.
https://diamondlobby.com/platform/steam/best-pixel-games-on-steam/