Games.

If my thoughts seem a little disjointed right now, please excuse me. I'm trying to sort through what I was thinking about at work several hours ago.

Not exactly a review tonight. I just got off work and I've been thinking all day about video games. Specifically, games that irritated me during my childhood and have haunted me to this day. I kind of got the idea from Spoony's Bayou Billy review; basically he says that the game haunted his childhood because it was so hard, yet he kept playing it. My entire NES experience, with the exception of a couple of games, was like that.

Back in the day before the internet, there weren't any faqs or reviews or anything. Especially kids like me, who didn't subscribe to Nintendo Power, we were fucked when it came to knowing if games were any good. The only thing you had to go on was the box art, the blurb on the back and maybe what your friends told you. Needless to say, everybody got their share of shitty games. I'll go in depth about two in particular that I never beat that still mock me even now, 20 years or so later.

First and foremost, I have to say, Back to the Future 2 & 3 was probably my favorite. It's an LJN game, which is enough to make most NES fans shudder in horror, but it's not that bad. If you're looking for it to follow the movies plot, then you're going to be disappointed. It kind of does, but not really. The gist of it is, you play as Marty, attempting to get the sports almanac from Biff, but in order to do that, you have to travel between 1955, 1985 and 2015 and attempt to find 30 items and return them not only to their correct time, but the correct location. If you don't map it out, you're screwed because there are something like 20 streets on each of the 3 times. Seriously, it sucks. I think the furthest I got was about 10 items found but not returned. My dad and I had all three years mapped out, but we still couldn't find where everything was, let alone where it went. After you get through 2, you get to play 3, which is about half as long and not really worth it. I loved this game as a kid, but it still haunts me that I was never able to complete it. As if the game wasn't already knock-you-down, steal-your-lunch-money hard, but they make it freaking long as hell and don't bother with a password system. Fuckers.

The second game was almost the same. Same company, a movie tie-in game, time travel, nut-bustingly hard...Why did I like these games back then? Bill and Ted's Excellent Video-Game Adventure. The name almost screams "I suck!" doesn't it? It's not nearly as bad as it sounds, really! The object of the game is to return certain historical figures back to their time and make it to the Wyld Stallyns concert. Obviously you play as Bill and Ted, but the duo is split up for this adventure. Bogus. You alternate between the two on each level and each one gets harder until you're pulling your hair out in frustration because you've spent half the level in jail and don't even have one piece of historical bait. Oh yeah, I didn't mention that, did I? The historical figures don't want to return to their own times and so you need to find bait to lure them into the booth. Some of the locals are hostile and will throw you into jail and you have several items that you can use to either calm them, kill them or distract them, and you will be using them all to get through. I think the farthest I ever got was the next to the last level. Once again, maps are your best friend in this game, so much so that the instruction manual has map pages instead of note pages. The reason maps are required in this game is that it is completely random. I mean, RANDOM!!! There are certain places where the historical bait always is but the bait is random, you will find bait for figures that you don't need...bah, it's just confusing.

I got my NES for, I think, Christmas when I was 5 and I still own it. Through out those 20 years of gaming, I have only completely beat two games on it: NARC and Wizards and Warriors 3: Kuros Visions of Power. That one was incredibly hard and it was a very satisfying win. But those two games, from a few of my favorite movies growing up, still mock me, even two decades later.