We reach another game I was always going to feature on this blog eventually, as it’s a personal favourite of mine. Punch-Out!! (yes, I missed out on the Mike Tyson version) was one of the few NES games I was actually good at, being so young at the time, and it remains incredibly fun and playable today. So let’s take a look!
Funnily enough, out of the black box light gun games for the NES, I had (and still have, boxed on the shelf!) Wild Gunman and Hogan’s Alley, but never owned Duck Hunt. I did however play it around a friends a few times, so I was at least a bit familiar with it growing up. Still, on the topic of Smash Ultimate (as this marathon is!) I was more thrilled for the Wild Gunman and Hogan’s Alley references in Duck Hunt Duo’s moveset than the duo themselves when they were revealed for Smash 4. Anyway, it just wouldn’t make sense to review anything other than Duck Hunt for Duck Hunt Duo’s day in the countdown, so… let’s do it!
As we near the end of the original NES run of Mega Man games, we start to see the problem with an action platforming game releasing so many entries on a single system. While there is a new bird companion (if you manage to collect all the slightly-hidden letters on all stages, which for the record, I didn’t… That’s what I get for going in blind!) the game otherwise feel like the same old, same old. Is that a bad thing, though? Let’s find out!
My first play through of the Mega Man series continues with Mega Man 4. It’s pretty Mega Man-by-numbers, though the addition of the charge shot makes it feel closer to later, Mega Man X-style games to me (obviously at the time it was just a new idea in general!) Also Dr. Wiley is gone! Replaced with Dr. Cossack… who was being forced to do bad by Dr. Wiley. Oh well! Let’s have a look!
We now reach “uncharted territory” for me as I never played past Mega Man 2 back in the day, and while it’s weird not to have a “Thoughts Then” section on a NES game, that’s just how it is! MM3 introduces both Mega Man’s dog Rush and the ground slide, which comes in handy all the damn time… Let’s have a look!
My playthrough of the Mega Man series continues into Mega Man 2, what is often considered the peak of the series. It’s certainly earned its reputation as a classic, both level design-wise and definitely soundtrack-wise! With this comes the conclusion of the Mega Man games I played as a child and couldn’t get very far in, but have now completed (that’s a wordy category…), so let’s get to it!
I played Mega Man on my brother’s NES when I was very young, so young that I sucked at it… really bad. I then played it as a teen and I was bad, but not awful. Now I brought the Mega Man Legacy Collection on my PS4 and guess what? I completed the game! Admittedly I used a single game state save before starting the Wily stages, but still! Very happy to get that monkey off my back, and now it’s time to give it a review! Why not?
The rundown (finally) continues as the first licensed game appears. Again, I know there was a WWF game released before this (simply titled WrestleMania) and one after it (called Steel Cage Challenge) but as I said in entry one, this is all about the games I’ve played and can therefore give a then and now review on. I may later play some of the missed NES games and just give a “Now” review, but they won’t be apart of this rundown of Wrestling games I’ve played throughout my life. So, on to WrestleMania Challenge…
The rundown begins! In the first part of the soon-to-be-ongoing series, we look at Tecmo World Wrestling on the NES. It has to be said here that I never owned the iconic and simply named Pro-Wrestling (among other 8-bit and handheld wrestling games) and so it will be missed out here. Once it gets to the 16-bit era and beyond I brought pretty much every game in the Wrestling genre released here in the UK (and a few that weren’t!), so the Wrestling Rundown will start being a general rundown rather than my personal rundown quite quickly. Anyway, without further ado…
Hogan Reviews 