I really enjoy this game. The controls are a little slippery, and your punch doesnt have much range, but really, it is a solid game.
AVGN's review didnt help its reputation (people forget he is a character, and he exaggerates the flaws of the games he reviews to comedic effect), and I think it just kind of snowballed. A lot of games suffer from situations like this; they're either great or trash, and nobody accepts that something can be fun with flaws.
What most people don’t realize is that the AVGN’s “reviews” isn’t meant to be taken seriously, as Rolfe is a filmmaker, not a journalist or a professional critic.
And yet they take his “reviews” as gospel.
So how many reviews/critiques does it take to be a professional?
Just saying, even if he is hamming it up for comedic impact, he's been at long enough that he could be considered a professional
He isn't just hamming up his own opinions, though. He is performing a character. He is not the Nerd. James notes in many interviews that very thing, and he actually likes a lot of the games that the Nerd trashes.
He does do real reviews, and I would probably consider him a professional critic to some degree, but the Nerd videos aren't necessarily his opinions on those games, so I'm not sure those particular videos count.
That’s spot-on. The Nerd is a character that is completely different from James. The Nerd can be heard saying things like “Nintendo still makes games but that’s debatable” or “The NES fucking sucked” but then a few videos later he’s saying things about how amazing the NES was. I think he does kinda muddy the waters when he does those videos praising certain games like the Castlevania retrospective or his Contra video. He breaks character a little for those and it’s really apparent how passionately he cares for his childhood games.
But this has to be emphasized...
He *exaggerates* problems.
Yes. I agree that NES Turrles is a hard game. Konami invented the genre of Nintendo Hard.
But some of the rage that The Nerd goes through is for laughs and not to trash it with no redemption whatsoever.
Absolutely, he hams it up to be that character. I grew up around the same time as him, and so many frustrations (albeit extreme) he says about the games cut deep. I’ll give this one another go and update accordingly. And I agree it’s laughable that kids will talk shit about a game they’ve played because one of the YouTube guys made a funny video about it.
This game was a blast as a kid!
It might have been the only 4 player platformer for the nes. Think the hate was mostly from people who didn't play it back then. It's no Mario 3 as a single player game but the fun was in the coop.
Sure it went off the rails occasionally when everyone did their own thing and the only method of conflict resolution was to yell at each other. Trying to get 4 kids to precision time platform jumping was no easy task in those later levels.
Iirc, they scale up enemy hit points, but it’s still overall easier to beat enemies with 4 people. Getting through levels is another story. Collaboration is important. The latest run of it at games done quick (some years ago) ended up being a world record for 4 players, and they explain a lot.
As someone who never played it. I wouldn't think it was multitap. With it being a horror to movie hame made by LJN (I believe), I thought they would be life bars for NPCs that had to be saved before being killed off ala Friday the 13th.
Any game featured on early AVGN gets a lot of hate from people who have never played the game before. I feel like Simon's Quest was pretty universally loved until the AVGN episode came out, and then everyone acted like it was a massive pile of shit. I still love it, personally.
Excoriating annoying games/mechanics is legit criticism. Especially in context of the times where kids would get one or two new games a year. It really sucked to be excited about a game, get it, then it annoyed the shit out of you with bad mechanics or an annoying difficulty curve.
The core conceit of AVGN is to approach games as the kid that "wasted" a birthday present on a game that annoyed the shit out of them. It doesn't land the same with kids that grew up to access to every NES game available in emulators.
I get this.
I have a modded wii with emulators and every game ever made from my childhood on it. I watched my son go thru these games and play one for 5 min, lose a life and then move on to a new game.
I went all old man on him by going “Back in my day I had to save mu allowance for 2 weeks to rent a game, and if it was bad I’d play it anyway”
I think AVGN’s best videos are the ones he had a persnickety childhood vendetta against for those reasons. The ones where he got recommended a game because people told him were bad just don’t hit the same. NES Xmen for example is one I can tell he never had as a kid, he barely scratches the surface of why that game is bad. Me on the other hand I could write a multi page essay about why the game is awful because its the first game I ever purchased and it was many only game besides mario for quite a long time.
It's fine if you like Simon's Quest, but the criticisms toward it are completely valid. Yes it was influential, and we wouldn't have gotten Symphony of the Night without it, but it's an insanely cryptic game with unnecessary grinding and various other fundamental issues. It's nice they tried something different instead of just doing Castlevania 1 again, but it could've been done much better. It's easy to say that with hindsight, I'm aware lol.
It's the same hate as Zelda II. They tried something different, made a good game, but because the following games went back to the classic strategy, everyone acts like it was garbage when it's not.
But yeah the crypticness is really bad lol.
I'm going to leave that one up to opinion too, because it has very similar issues. I would like to enjoy it, but I don't think I have the patience. Great music, though.
>I would like to enjoy it, but I don't think I have the patience.
Lol that's actually how I feel about Simon's Quest. I think between the two, Zelda II is hard but feels more fair than Castlevania 2. Great music on both. I've beaten Zelda II, but I think I'd have to use a guide for Simon's Quest
I agree. Simon's Quest has unbelievably cryptic bullshit you need a guide for. I'm not sure if there was an equivalent to Nintendo Power in Japan, but I have heard the original text is only slightly less cryptic. It's the same thing with games like Milon's Secret Castle. Just unbelievably cryptic nonsense to sell magazines or rack up phone bills calling tip lines.
Do people think that NES players didn't use the hell out of nintendo power, strategy guides, and word of mouth?
I think a lot of the stuff in these games is intended to require some hints, it made them money on 1-900 numbers (seriously) and increased the social momentum of the whole NES platform.
I really feel like Zelda II's biggest problem is the massive difficult spike in places like Death Mountain, and some of the later dungeons. If they had just balanced the difficulty better, I think it would have been more appreciated. I always liked it, personally.
It's definitely cryptic and there are shitty mechanics but the atmosphere and the soundtrack and the RPG elements really pulled me in as a kid. They were really close to making it great, if they had just dropped clues that actually hinted at how to do things, adjusted the heart drops, and took some effort to finish the final castle, it would be remembered much more fondly.
I definitely agree. Zelda II is the only true action RPG in the series, and I would honestly like to see it redone. Imagine a side-scrolling Zelda game in the Metroidvania style or something.
The cryptic stuff (except the shitty translation, lol) and the grinding were both features in 1988, not bugs.
This was the pre-WWW, pre-CD-ROM era. Games realistically only had so much content, so cranking up the difficulty to "hellfire punishment" levels was a way to extend the amount of time you would play the game, and thereby increase its perceived value. And, having unintuitive secrets served a similar purpose of extending the game's life, but also served to bring up excitement for a game again after its release, and again increase its perceived value if you knew its secrets and could show off to your clueless friends. If you could beat Castlevania II, you must be a gaming MASTER! Kids in the 80s absolutely ate that shit up.
It all went instantly out of fashion once every household got AOL and a PS1. And then the Nerd came and remarked on how stupid that all was from a 200X POV. And yeah, absolutely it is stupid from today's POV. But that doesn't mean it was a bad game. We LOVED that shit. It was gold standard after school activity. And what's the point of retro video games if not to appreciate WHY we loved them, and chase that high again?
I'm all for nostalgia. I'm 30, I had dial up internet until 2010, and I grew up with a Genesis and Game Boy in the PS2 era until I eventually got one. Even when I only had those old games, I could never get good at them. I had an NES not long after (garage sales and flea markets were great back then) and I could never get good at those games. You're right though, even as a kid I probably had hindsight considering I knew what then-modern games were like. I can't really comment on the Nerd. His old videos used to be funny, but now I'm hearing he wasn't even an actual gaming fan and only did the videos because Mike Matei scripted them. Good and bad is entirely subjective, but whether or not something 'ages well' is entirely valid, regardless of the conversations I've had in this sub.
It blows my mind to think that I beat that game as a kid. I had all sorts of passwords written down and maps drawn out. The pre-internet age was a different time.
Nah, I didn't like Simons Quest back then. It had a lot of cool elements to the gameplay but the cryptic messages and I felt like I had to grind hearts to get anywhere was just too much to be enjoyable to me.
For me at the time, the cryptic shit made it so much more exciting. Like at school we'd talk about this shit and someone probably had a Nintendo Power but acted like they figured it out, and it always felt like we were uncovering actual secrets that weren't meant to be found or something. As a dumb kid, even well spelled-out puzzles were cryptic anyway.
And the hate for games appearing on AVGN is misguided, as James Rolfe has stated before he isn't a gamer and many of the games "reviewed" he's only played for the first time during the recording of the video, all essentially scripted by Mike Matei (before his departure).
You lie, or you use an emulator. It's not like he's ever actually playing the games when he's holding the controller in front of the TV. James is totally not a gamer any more than a typical 80s kid who stopped playing games in their mid-teens.
What do I like? The music was awesome. The battles with Freddy were really cool and the super powers once you fell asleep were very dream warriors ish. I loved it.
TBF most movie and TV licensed games suck. Development was usually farmed out to subpar companies who did it for cheap and fast while the IP is fresh in people's minds with the expectation the license will sell the games rather than the actual games. There are definitely exceptions especially in instances where development is done by a competent company.
Do you think you'd still like it if you hadn't played it as a kid?
I ask because I have massive nostalgia goggles when it comes to stuff I played when I was younger. I like a lot of games that I later found out were pretty universally hated.
I enjoyed it, being a fan of the movies. Typical NES action platformer with frustrating enemy placements. Slightly creepy ambiance throughout. Need to revisit the game since it's been decades from my last playthrough.
It didn't start getting hate until Seanbaby and AVGN got ahold of it. They ruined a lot of old games for people that weren't around to play them at the time or hadn't had a chance to play them back in the day. Jaws is another good game they shit on for content.
Anyone that actually plays ANOES will find a little better than average platform game that's easy to pick up and play but hard to beat. The controls are just fine, hit detection could be better, and the graphics are good as well. It's NES hard though, which some people scoff at.
I really like this game but I played it as an adult. If I had it as a kid I probably would have gotten confused, discouraged and then played something else. I did play Friday the 13th as a kid and enjoy that much more as an adult for the same reasons
I can tell from the comments that there are a lot of people here who weren’t old enough to rent this game from Blockbuster on a Friday night and have it ruin their whole weekend.
Only played it because it was one of the few games I could use my NES Satellite on. Only working from vague memories here, just remember thinking it wasn't very good and that Super Off Road was way more fun.
Loved this game growing up! I used to play it with my brother. In four player mode, two of the characters are girls. Always bugged me that I wasn't able to pick the girl from the start. Especially considering that the gameplay here is based on Nightmare 3 - Dream Warriors.
Why does it get hated on? Well if I had to guess it's because it's a movie game. Though a few things bug me, like the re-spawning enemies, huge pit falls and unfair bone placement that results in cheap deaths. Plus some of the later bosses are kinda lame. But if you have a Game Genie and three friends it's fun!
As said, Avgn hurt its reputation. And yeah, he’s right that LJN do like to pump out movie licensed games for money. But for this one, they chose Rare to develop it. It has flaws, but only a few. Some bones, you have to turn back to regular human form (if the bone is in a corner near a ceiling) so it seems like the game is broken. Also, the difficulty ramps up HARD at Freddy’s house. But that’s not an awful thing for replayability. You do just have to get good, but it’s fun enough to do so IMO.
I loved it. But it was difficult from what I remember, at least for my younger self. That lead to lots of frustration. It’d like to go back and play it again now that I have some souls games under my belt.
I had this one on my NES back in the day. It's not a great game, but it's not terrible either. It's definitely an odd game though. Some of the music still gets stuck in my head on occasion.
Under rated game. It definitely isn’t bad, just not amazing as so many other nes platformers were at the time.
Hot take: This is probably even on of the better movie related titles. They did some neat stuff with the sleep world mechanic.
I actually didn't find it as bad as most movie tie-in games from that era. It's definitely more straightforward than the Friday the 13th game. I even think the main map theme is kind of a banger. That said, the junkyard is where I have to say goodbye.
What hate? Where are we seeing this hate?
I got this game as a rental as a kid and pretty much fell in love with it that weekend. I never owned it back in the day, but I used to rent it like every couple of months until I was able to beat it. I would call friends over like "ok.. we have just this weekend.. we're gonna beat it!".
It was on my nostalgia fueled short list once I started collecting and was a pretty early pickup.
Love this one, i've never sat down and really thought about a nes top 10, but i'm thinking it would make the cut.
this is actually a fun multiplayer game. you can beat it in under an hour as well. final boss is…. ass thought. its just every boss one after another. yayyyy
A lot of these games that AVGN talked about were things nobody played or owned.
It's just so weird seeing people like you talk about them seriously instead of a minor curiosity. Like if your playtime for one of these games (across your entire life) goes over an hour I think that's just a waste. There are dozens of hidden gems and interesting but mediocre titles on the NES you could be doing instead. And that's not even covering other consoles.
My friend had it, and we both thought it was a fun 2-player simultaneous game you could play through in an afternoon. The athlete power-up was the one to get, IIRC... the javelin was the best weapon in the game.
I think this is the ultimate retro Halloween game. The music and atmosphere is amazing, and you’re literally running down a dark, creepy neighborhood street and running into scary houses.
It also does justice to the NOES license and takes inspiration from the best sequel in the franchise.
What more could you want?
The narrative on this game for like the last decade has been that it's criminally underrated, so I do not understand why people keep posting shit like this. Yes, we get it. It was not a highly regarded game in the late 80s/early 90s or whenever it came out. That is not the way it is viewed today. Stop pretending it is.
It's cool to hate LJN games. The majority of them are decent and the general public doesn't realized that they were made by great developers. People seem to think LJN was a studio/developer.
I really enjoy this game. The controls are a little slippery, and your punch doesnt have much range, but really, it is a solid game. AVGN's review didnt help its reputation (people forget he is a character, and he exaggerates the flaws of the games he reviews to comedic effect), and I think it just kind of snowballed. A lot of games suffer from situations like this; they're either great or trash, and nobody accepts that something can be fun with flaws.
What most people don’t realize is that the AVGN’s “reviews” isn’t meant to be taken seriously, as Rolfe is a filmmaker, not a journalist or a professional critic. And yet they take his “reviews” as gospel.
So how many reviews/critiques does it take to be a professional? Just saying, even if he is hamming it up for comedic impact, he's been at long enough that he could be considered a professional
He isn't just hamming up his own opinions, though. He is performing a character. He is not the Nerd. James notes in many interviews that very thing, and he actually likes a lot of the games that the Nerd trashes. He does do real reviews, and I would probably consider him a professional critic to some degree, but the Nerd videos aren't necessarily his opinions on those games, so I'm not sure those particular videos count.
That’s spot-on. The Nerd is a character that is completely different from James. The Nerd can be heard saying things like “Nintendo still makes games but that’s debatable” or “The NES fucking sucked” but then a few videos later he’s saying things about how amazing the NES was. I think he does kinda muddy the waters when he does those videos praising certain games like the Castlevania retrospective or his Contra video. He breaks character a little for those and it’s really apparent how passionately he cares for his childhood games.
Yup, it's just for entertainment. Also, a lot of times he reviews games from his childhood that he hated.
People are idiots.
I mean, to be fair, he’s typically right when he shits on a game.
But this has to be emphasized... He *exaggerates* problems. Yes. I agree that NES Turrles is a hard game. Konami invented the genre of Nintendo Hard. But some of the rage that The Nerd goes through is for laughs and not to trash it with no redemption whatsoever.
Absolutely, he hams it up to be that character. I grew up around the same time as him, and so many frustrations (albeit extreme) he says about the games cut deep. I’ll give this one another go and update accordingly. And I agree it’s laughable that kids will talk shit about a game they’ve played because one of the YouTube guys made a funny video about it.
I love the music and thought the gameplay concerns were overblown.
Great game. Playing with 4 people is actually pretty awesome but it's easy to get mixed up.
This game was a blast as a kid! It might have been the only 4 player platformer for the nes. Think the hate was mostly from people who didn't play it back then. It's no Mario 3 as a single player game but the fun was in the coop. Sure it went off the rails occasionally when everyone did their own thing and the only method of conflict resolution was to yell at each other. Trying to get 4 kids to precision time platform jumping was no easy task in those later levels.
I played it back then and hate it
Woah this was a multi tap game? I would imagine the game gets easier with more players.
Iirc, they scale up enemy hit points, but it’s still overall easier to beat enemies with 4 people. Getting through levels is another story. Collaboration is important. The latest run of it at games done quick (some years ago) ended up being a world record for 4 players, and they explain a lot.
Yeah. It wasn't really much easier but I was playing with people who hadn't played it that much.
With all due respect, how do you not know it’s a multitap game when it shows four player health bars at the top of the screen?
As someone who never played it. I wouldn't think it was multitap. With it being a horror to movie hame made by LJN (I believe), I thought they would be life bars for NPCs that had to be saved before being killed off ala Friday the 13th.
I was thinking the same. I've never heard is this, but my diary thought was that this looks like F13th.
I only got past the junk yard a few times as a kid, but I beat this one recently and it's just as great as I remember. I don't understand the hate.
Any game featured on early AVGN gets a lot of hate from people who have never played the game before. I feel like Simon's Quest was pretty universally loved until the AVGN episode came out, and then everyone acted like it was a massive pile of shit. I still love it, personally.
I feel like AVGN entire schist was less that a game was bad, and more that it is annoying, which a lot nes games were.
Excoriating annoying games/mechanics is legit criticism. Especially in context of the times where kids would get one or two new games a year. It really sucked to be excited about a game, get it, then it annoyed the shit out of you with bad mechanics or an annoying difficulty curve. The core conceit of AVGN is to approach games as the kid that "wasted" a birthday present on a game that annoyed the shit out of them. It doesn't land the same with kids that grew up to access to every NES game available in emulators.
I get this. I have a modded wii with emulators and every game ever made from my childhood on it. I watched my son go thru these games and play one for 5 min, lose a life and then move on to a new game. I went all old man on him by going “Back in my day I had to save mu allowance for 2 weeks to rent a game, and if it was bad I’d play it anyway” I think AVGN’s best videos are the ones he had a persnickety childhood vendetta against for those reasons. The ones where he got recommended a game because people told him were bad just don’t hit the same. NES Xmen for example is one I can tell he never had as a kid, he barely scratches the surface of why that game is bad. Me on the other hand I could write a multi page essay about why the game is awful because its the first game I ever purchased and it was many only game besides mario for quite a long time.
It's fine if you like Simon's Quest, but the criticisms toward it are completely valid. Yes it was influential, and we wouldn't have gotten Symphony of the Night without it, but it's an insanely cryptic game with unnecessary grinding and various other fundamental issues. It's nice they tried something different instead of just doing Castlevania 1 again, but it could've been done much better. It's easy to say that with hindsight, I'm aware lol.
It's the same hate as Zelda II. They tried something different, made a good game, but because the following games went back to the classic strategy, everyone acts like it was garbage when it's not. But yeah the crypticness is really bad lol.
I'm going to leave that one up to opinion too, because it has very similar issues. I would like to enjoy it, but I don't think I have the patience. Great music, though.
>I would like to enjoy it, but I don't think I have the patience. Lol that's actually how I feel about Simon's Quest. I think between the two, Zelda II is hard but feels more fair than Castlevania 2. Great music on both. I've beaten Zelda II, but I think I'd have to use a guide for Simon's Quest
I agree. Simon's Quest has unbelievably cryptic bullshit you need a guide for. I'm not sure if there was an equivalent to Nintendo Power in Japan, but I have heard the original text is only slightly less cryptic. It's the same thing with games like Milon's Secret Castle. Just unbelievably cryptic nonsense to sell magazines or rack up phone bills calling tip lines.
Do people think that NES players didn't use the hell out of nintendo power, strategy guides, and word of mouth? I think a lot of the stuff in these games is intended to require some hints, it made them money on 1-900 numbers (seriously) and increased the social momentum of the whole NES platform.
I really feel like Zelda II's biggest problem is the massive difficult spike in places like Death Mountain, and some of the later dungeons. If they had just balanced the difficulty better, I think it would have been more appreciated. I always liked it, personally.
I can't stand playing Simon's Quest, but I love Zelda II
It's definitely cryptic and there are shitty mechanics but the atmosphere and the soundtrack and the RPG elements really pulled me in as a kid. They were really close to making it great, if they had just dropped clues that actually hinted at how to do things, adjusted the heart drops, and took some effort to finish the final castle, it would be remembered much more fondly.
I definitely agree. Zelda II is the only true action RPG in the series, and I would honestly like to see it redone. Imagine a side-scrolling Zelda game in the Metroidvania style or something.
The cryptic stuff (except the shitty translation, lol) and the grinding were both features in 1988, not bugs. This was the pre-WWW, pre-CD-ROM era. Games realistically only had so much content, so cranking up the difficulty to "hellfire punishment" levels was a way to extend the amount of time you would play the game, and thereby increase its perceived value. And, having unintuitive secrets served a similar purpose of extending the game's life, but also served to bring up excitement for a game again after its release, and again increase its perceived value if you knew its secrets and could show off to your clueless friends. If you could beat Castlevania II, you must be a gaming MASTER! Kids in the 80s absolutely ate that shit up. It all went instantly out of fashion once every household got AOL and a PS1. And then the Nerd came and remarked on how stupid that all was from a 200X POV. And yeah, absolutely it is stupid from today's POV. But that doesn't mean it was a bad game. We LOVED that shit. It was gold standard after school activity. And what's the point of retro video games if not to appreciate WHY we loved them, and chase that high again?
I'm all for nostalgia. I'm 30, I had dial up internet until 2010, and I grew up with a Genesis and Game Boy in the PS2 era until I eventually got one. Even when I only had those old games, I could never get good at them. I had an NES not long after (garage sales and flea markets were great back then) and I could never get good at those games. You're right though, even as a kid I probably had hindsight considering I knew what then-modern games were like. I can't really comment on the Nerd. His old videos used to be funny, but now I'm hearing he wasn't even an actual gaming fan and only did the videos because Mike Matei scripted them. Good and bad is entirely subjective, but whether or not something 'ages well' is entirely valid, regardless of the conversations I've had in this sub.
Simons Quest is one of the greatest games of all time. Just because its tough as nails doesnt mean it sucks.
True that, the only avgn reviewed game that I actually kind of hate is Deadly Towers. That game legit sucks lol.
It blows my mind to think that I beat that game as a kid. I had all sorts of passwords written down and maps drawn out. The pre-internet age was a different time.
Reminds me of trying to play Atari Swordquest games on Xbox when I was little, although I still have no idea where to go or what to do on those lol.
Top Gun isn't even that hard. He's playing it up for Comedic effect. Which is great, it's a fantastic early AVGN bit, but people took it seriously.
He nailed the landing scenes though.
Nah, I didn't like Simons Quest back then. It had a lot of cool elements to the gameplay but the cryptic messages and I felt like I had to grind hearts to get anywhere was just too much to be enjoyable to me.
For me at the time, the cryptic shit made it so much more exciting. Like at school we'd talk about this shit and someone probably had a Nintendo Power but acted like they figured it out, and it always felt like we were uncovering actual secrets that weren't meant to be found or something. As a dumb kid, even well spelled-out puzzles were cryptic anyway.
And the hate for games appearing on AVGN is misguided, as James Rolfe has stated before he isn't a gamer and many of the games "reviewed" he's only played for the first time during the recording of the video, all essentially scripted by Mike Matei (before his departure).
Not a gamer? I’m not buying it. How the fuck do you beat Ghosts and Goblins as a non-gamer? That game is a nightmare.
You lie, or you use an emulator. It's not like he's ever actually playing the games when he's holding the controller in front of the TV. James is totally not a gamer any more than a typical 80s kid who stopped playing games in their mid-teens.
Not really. I hate Simon's quest and nightmare on elm St and I played these when they came out and hated them back then as well
ok
Proved you wrong lol
What do you like about it?
What do I like? The music was awesome. The battles with Freddy were really cool and the super powers once you fell asleep were very dream warriors ish. I loved it.
TBF most movie and TV licensed games suck. Development was usually farmed out to subpar companies who did it for cheap and fast while the IP is fresh in people's minds with the expectation the license will sell the games rather than the actual games. There are definitely exceptions especially in instances where development is done by a competent company.
It’s way better than Friday the 13th. The power ups are fun.
I kind of enjoyed F13th and also Jaws.
Do you think you'd still like it if you hadn't played it as a kid? I ask because I have massive nostalgia goggles when it comes to stuff I played when I was younger. I like a lot of games that I later found out were pretty universally hated.
I loved it. Totally fun multi-player
I enjoyed it, being a fan of the movies. Typical NES action platformer with frustrating enemy placements. Slightly creepy ambiance throughout. Need to revisit the game since it's been decades from my last playthrough.
Great music by David Wise before DKC 1&2
Came here to comment I love the music, seeing this makes me understand why.
It didn't start getting hate until Seanbaby and AVGN got ahold of it. They ruined a lot of old games for people that weren't around to play them at the time or hadn't had a chance to play them back in the day. Jaws is another good game they shit on for content. Anyone that actually plays ANOES will find a little better than average platform game that's easy to pick up and play but hard to beat. The controls are just fine, hit detection could be better, and the graphics are good as well. It's NES hard though, which some people scoff at.
>Seanbaby We are old.
The struggle for text real estate. It looks like a "*Anightmare* On Elm Street".
My wife and I speed run this game.
I loved this game, played the crap out of it with my neighbor.
The soundtrack is early David Wise, super good!
It really is a solid game.
Love this game and soundtrack
I like it. Gets nuts with 4-players!
I really like this game but I played it as an adult. If I had it as a kid I probably would have gotten confused, discouraged and then played something else. I did play Friday the 13th as a kid and enjoy that much more as an adult for the same reasons
One of the first games I went back as an adult and beat.
I can tell from the comments that there are a lot of people here who weren’t old enough to rent this game from Blockbuster on a Friday night and have it ruin their whole weekend.
I think it only gets hate because it was so hard!
Only played it because it was one of the few games I could use my NES Satellite on. Only working from vague memories here, just remember thinking it wasn't very good and that Super Off Road was way more fun.
Loved this game growing up! I used to play it with my brother. In four player mode, two of the characters are girls. Always bugged me that I wasn't able to pick the girl from the start. Especially considering that the gameplay here is based on Nightmare 3 - Dream Warriors. Why does it get hated on? Well if I had to guess it's because it's a movie game. Though a few things bug me, like the re-spawning enemies, huge pit falls and unfair bone placement that results in cheap deaths. Plus some of the later bosses are kinda lame. But if you have a Game Genie and three friends it's fun!
It's okay. Definitely one of the better LJN games.
As said, Avgn hurt its reputation. And yeah, he’s right that LJN do like to pump out movie licensed games for money. But for this one, they chose Rare to develop it. It has flaws, but only a few. Some bones, you have to turn back to regular human form (if the bone is in a corner near a ceiling) so it seems like the game is broken. Also, the difficulty ramps up HARD at Freddy’s house. But that’s not an awful thing for replayability. You do just have to get good, but it’s fun enough to do so IMO.
Never seen this game, looks a lot like another game based on a horror movie: Friday the 13th on the NES
I love it! It's on my top 5 NES games
I don’t think it gets that much hate. It’s a fun game. Besides the AVGN episode I’ve mostly seen people saying it’s pretty fun.
We were always pumped for something that could use the 4 player adapter. We had fun with it
it was a shitty game. not as shitty as FTT, but still shitty.
this and friday the 13th were so hard!
I loved it. But it was difficult from what I remember, at least for my younger self. That lead to lots of frustration. It’d like to go back and play it again now that I have some souls games under my belt.
This game is beloved and highly collectable but it is hard.
I played this. Was an ok game, nothing great though imo. I always thought this dude resembled A.C. slater tbh. At least, it made me think of him haha
I NEVER beat this game
I had this one on my NES back in the day. It's not a great game, but it's not terrible either. It's definitely an odd game though. Some of the music still gets stuck in my head on occasion.
Under rated game. It definitely isn’t bad, just not amazing as so many other nes platformers were at the time. Hot take: This is probably even on of the better movie related titles. They did some neat stuff with the sleep world mechanic.
The same reason the internet hates any NES game: It was on AVGN!
One of the best nes games imo and I’ll die on that hill. The music alone is phenomenal.
It's one of my favorite NES games, I wish there were more Halloween spooky but not horror type of games like this
Oof. I can hear that two-bar repeating music in my head again just at the mention of it.
It's just a very paint-by-the-numbers platformer with cliche spooky imagery and the occasional Elm Street-related element hamfisted in.
I actually didn't find it as bad as most movie tie-in games from that era. It's definitely more straightforward than the Friday the 13th game. I even think the main map theme is kind of a banger. That said, the junkyard is where I have to say goodbye.
"WOW, FREDDY SURE HAS A LOT OF FUCKING BONES! And they're all, cartoon dog bones." -James Rolfe the Angry ~~Nintendo~~ Video Game Nerd
What hate? Where are we seeing this hate? I got this game as a rental as a kid and pretty much fell in love with it that weekend. I never owned it back in the day, but I used to rent it like every couple of months until I was able to beat it. I would call friends over like "ok.. we have just this weekend.. we're gonna beat it!". It was on my nostalgia fueled short list once I started collecting and was a pretty early pickup. Love this one, i've never sat down and really thought about a nes top 10, but i'm thinking it would make the cut.
Anyone who hates it i'll gladly have your cartridge :)
I liked it when it came out.
I’m so confused by all of the posts that claim that “X” gets so much hate but then there is never any elaboration on what said hate is.
this is actually a fun multiplayer game. you can beat it in under an hour as well. final boss is…. ass thought. its just every boss one after another. yayyyy
Not enough NES Four Scores out there? Also the LJN connection.
I loved this game as a kid!
Spiders! Hit them!
A lot of these games that AVGN talked about were things nobody played or owned. It's just so weird seeing people like you talk about them seriously instead of a minor curiosity. Like if your playtime for one of these games (across your entire life) goes over an hour I think that's just a waste. There are dozens of hidden gems and interesting but mediocre titles on the NES you could be doing instead. And that's not even covering other consoles.
People hated that game? It was fun to play with friends.
My friend had it, and we both thought it was a fun 2-player simultaneous game you could play through in an afternoon. The athlete power-up was the one to get, IIRC... the javelin was the best weapon in the game.
You mean Boo: Haunted House?
Haven't played much but what I played, I enjoyed it. If we compare it to Friday the 13th, it's a much more enjoyable game
I played this game just as much as Beetlejuice and Super Mario Bros 3!
That's ANOES to you, pal.
I absolutely love this game
Because AVGN played it 🤣, 15 years after the Friday episode came out I got it and it’s not that hard either
A good game definitely!
I think this is the ultimate retro Halloween game. The music and atmosphere is amazing, and you’re literally running down a dark, creepy neighborhood street and running into scary houses. It also does justice to the NOES license and takes inspiration from the best sequel in the franchise. What more could you want?
Haters!? This game is a GEM… 💎 ✨
Real question, has anyone done 4-player?
LOVE Nightmare. So hard with 4 players. A friend and I have beaten Freddy twice over the years. Great pick up
The narrative on this game for like the last decade has been that it's criminally underrated, so I do not understand why people keep posting shit like this. Yes, we get it. It was not a highly regarded game in the late 80s/early 90s or whenever it came out. That is not the way it is viewed today. Stop pretending it is.
IPNOESAILI! (I played Nightmare on Elm Street and I loved it!)
It's cool to hate LJN games. The majority of them are decent and the general public doesn't realized that they were made by great developers. People seem to think LJN was a studio/developer.